


I Will Meet You Anywhere

by missingmymothership



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Donny's grandma is amazing, F/M, Rewrite, Slow Burn, fluffy until it isn't, karen is etenally done with everyone's shit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-05-30
Packaged: 2019-03-01 19:58:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 22,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13302117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missingmymothership/pseuds/missingmymothership
Summary: He opens the door and Pete is expertly dicing onions. Grandma’s got him wearing her floral wallpaper apron, the one that’s usually Donny’s, and the man’s masculinity doesn’t seem at all assaulted, which is really just a crime against everything good in this world, especially Donny, because he can’t wear that dumb thing without feeling like a fool. It’s funny--the apron fits Pete well, if a little snug. The man’s average-sized, maybe even a little slender in some places, but his presence fools Donny every time.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I enjoyed the Punisher, but I also enjoy canon-divergence.
> 
> I have like three chapters written so far?? And the end of chapter two is when it Really Diverges. I try not to post WIPs, but I just got so excited that I couldn't not. The dialogue I've taken from the show is unavoidable, but I promise I'll stop stealing at some point and make an honest person of myself. Maybe.
> 
> Enjoy!

“You some sort of secret badass, Pete?” Donny asks, and sees the other man hesitate for a minute before he answers.

Pete’s lips twitch. “Marine Corps.”

No way. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“My pa was in the Corps.” The words come out of his mouth unbidden, and Donny almost regrets it, except it’ll establish a connection with the stranger eating the other half of his sandwich and Donny has no fuckin’ friends anymore. “Like a superhero to me or something,” he adds, because it might mean something to Pete.

 _“Adular a un amigo es tenderle una trampa para los pies,”_ Donny hears his grandmother say from inside his head. Yeah yeah, grandma.

The corners of Pete’s mouth turn down even farther than already, if that’s even possible. This poor sadsack--maybe the way to his heart is cynicism. Donny decides baring his soul is worth a shot and shrugs. “Except they don’t die, right?”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” the man says, and takes a bite of sandwich. 

“He served three tours: Iraq twice, once in Afghanistan. Then some kid clipped him and my mom on their way back from a movie. Had to come up here, live with my grandma.”

Something between a hum and a grunt escapes Pete.

“You got family?”

An innocent question, but the man’s shoulders tighten. Donny just fucked up, didn’t he? He finishes his sandwich so he won’t have to fill the silence. Maybe Pete will feel like explaining.

He doesn’t. The man keeps his mouth shut and the only sounds are of chewing and the road below.

Donny takes a gamble. Can’t hurt, and he could always use another friend. If not, just another guy at the site who doesn’t like him. He feels bad, the guys kicking over the poor man’s lunch like that, stepping on his innocent little Pb&J. Sandwiches like that oughta be off-limits. “Pete, you wanna grab a drink after this?”

He gets a reaction. Something a little surprised, resting somewhere between confused and suspicious plays across Pete’s face. “Not lookin’ for friends, kid. Whatever it is you want, I’m not it.” He moves to leave.

Donny shrugs. This is his last chance. “Then you wanna come over for dinner? My grandma gets lonely sometimes; her mobility’s real bad so she doesn’t get out much.” He plays the ultimate manipulation card and hopes Pete forgives him. “I bet a new face’ll make her feel much better.”

Pete stares at him for a long, long minute, haggard features slowly morphing into a shocked grin. It doesn’t make him look as young as Donny expected it would. “I know what you’re doing.”

“Whatever I’m doing, I’m not lying.”

“Kid--”

“Donny. My name is Donny, and you look like you could use some good food. Grandma could use some company, and--” he takes a fortifying breath, “--so could I. If you don’t mind taking the bus we can leave when the day’s over.”

Pete’s features don’t soften, but he scrubs a hand over his face and nods once. “Why the hell not?”

“Meet you by the gate?”

“Sure.” He sounds less irritated than he probably wants to. Donny counts that as a win.

*

Madani frowns. “I was happy where I was, tits intact.”

“Others weren’t.”

She doesn’t know what to say to that.

At some point Wolf lets her go, but she feels like he’s just gone into the gaping wound in her soul with a felting needle, tearing it up again and fusing it all wrong. Madani gives herself a moment to sit with that feeling. Then she bares her teeth and reminds herself that it was pure animal determination that got her stuck in this hole--it’ll be the same that gets her out of it.

*

“--not gonna make it to group, some kid guilted me into dinner with his grandma.”

Even from this far away, Donny can hear the laughter on the other end of the phone. It’s not cruel, but it is sure entertained.

“Yeah, no, no I--Curtis, gimme a damn break here, I--” Pete’s eyes flick to him, and they’re less guarded than they were up on the roof at lunch today. Donny sees something in them he doesn’t want to think about. “He’s here, I gotta go. Yeah, you too.” He flips his phone-- _his Goddamn flip phone_ shut and leans back against the windscreen. “We heading out?”

“Yeah,” Donny says. 

“You want me to give you a ride, save some bus money?”

He didn’t know Pete had a car. “Uh, if you’re cool with it.”

Pete shrugs, as if to say _Wouldn’t’ve offered otherwise,_ and starts walking in the opposite direction without a word. Donny has to jog at first to keep up with him--the other man’s not especially tall, but he walks fast and takes long strides. The giant, ugly van of Pete’s is parked out in back, a part of the lot where the floodlights don’t reach. Somehow that doesn’t surprise Donny, but he still has to ask:

“Aren’t you worried about getting like, mugged or something?”

Pete almost snorts. “Sure, kid.”

“I mean, it’s dark over here. And Marines aren’t invincible.” Being a Marine didn’t help his dad when he got hit.

Pete sideeyes him, but there’s a softness to the set of his mouth that Donny’s gonna take to mean he’s not actually annoyed. “Appreciate the concern.”

Donny waits for a “but.” Pete just gets in the driver’s side, reaches over, and unlocks the passenger door. Donny gets in.

The seats are fabric and the rubber floor mats have seen a lot of wear; it’s a pretty standard van. Coupla odd stains where the mats don’t reach, but nothing that he can see well enough to set off alarm bells. Two locked cases in the back, edges glinting, nestled on a sleeping bag to keep them from sliding around. A duffle-shaped shadow sits near the back doors. He wonders if Pete lives in here. He doesn’t ask. It’s nothing to be ashamed of but he’s not sure how the man would feel about him asking. He seems like he’s got a lot of pride.

As Pete starts it up, Donny tries to make some conversation. “Have you had the van for a while?”

“Got it used,” he says, checking his rearview and backing out.

Oh. Donny tries to think of another question as they turn onto the street.

“Where’m I going?”

“Uh, keep heading straight.” Donny’s not too good with street names. “I’ll tell you when to turn.”

Pete gives him no indication he’s heard. Donny’s not sure he wants to repeat what he just said. The atmosphere in the van is almost chilly, even with the heat blasting--but Donny’s made friends with guys like this before. You just gotta give them time to open up, to see you don’t have any teeth, and maybe bring ‘em over for a homecooked meal and a grandma who can charm the pants off a snake. Donny is patient.

“Where’re you from?” he asks Pete, who shrugs and doesn’t answer. Oh shit, they’re coming up on a turn. “Turn right here.”

The man twitches and jerks the steering wheel, and the van swerves to the left. Several people punch their horns. Donny has to hold on to avoid being thrown into the door.

They make the turn.

“Put your seatbelt on,” Pete mutters. “And warn me earlier next time, kid. Don’t wanna get us killed.”

Donny grimaces, and fumbles with the belt for a second. “...Sorry.”

Pete shrugs again. That seems like the end of the conversation.

They make the rest of the trip safely.

*

The apartment Donny shares with his grandma is six steep flights of stairs away--the elevator’s out. He mentions this fact to Pete, who barely even blinks before he’s jogging unfazed up the stairs. Donny starts after him. It’s childish, but he doesn’t wanna be beaten by an old man. ‘Course, the way he was throwing that hammer...Donny’s not sure he has a chance. He decides to try anyway, knocking playfully into the other man’s shoulder on the way up.

“You trying to race me, kid?” Pete seems amused.

Donny takes that as a good sign; he grins and tries to keep his lead. He doesn’t want to waste any breath on banter. He’s been doing this for weeks but he’s still out of breath by the time they get to his floor. Pete trails after him at a steady jog, breathing deep and even, and even though he “lost,” there’s a touch of something smug around the corners of his mouth.

Pete follows him down the hall, and when they reach the apartment door Donny unlocks it. “Hi grandma,” he calls, and steps aside for Pete. “I brought a friend with me.”

She’s sitting in her chair by the window, playing checkers against herself on a TV tray, an old taped rerun of Phil Donahue playing for background noise. Grandma looks up, and her craggy face crinkles in a smile. She mutes the TV.

Donny looks over, and it’s like a different person’s standing next to him. Pete’s taken off his cap and his eyes are warm, his face open and charming in a way Donny’s never seen in their admittedly short time working together. He runs a large hand through his hair, almost self-conscious. He smiles-- _a real smile_ \--and inclines his head. “It’s nice to meet you, ma’am.”

What. The fuck. “Uh, Grandma, this is my buddy Pete, from the site. Pete, this’s my grandma.”

She moves to get up. “I was just getting dinner started.”

Pete starts forward. “There anything I can do to help you out?”

Grandma looks at Donny, suddenly a little shrewd. “I like this one.” Then she looks at Pete, who looks almost earnest. Again: What. The Fuck. “If you could help me chop some onions...” She grabs her walker and heads to the kitchenette.

Pete jumps to.

“Oh, and Donny?”

“Yeah, Grandma?”

“Would you mind taking out the trash for me?”

She’s trying to get rid of him. He almost rolls his eyes, except Grandma has eyes in the back of her head. He should give her adequate time to scope out Pete, anyway. The woman has an impeccable judge of character; Donny knows from experience. “Sure thing.”

He ties up the trashbag and brings it down six flights of stairs to the Dumpster out back. Then he drags himself back up the hell stairs and to his floor. Donny can hear faint laughter through the door. _Again:_ What. The _Fuck?_

Figures Pete would get along great with his grandma, though. She can make friends with people she bumps into at the grocery store. And Pete’s a Marine, was obviously raised polite. Maybe Donny should be less surprised.

He opens the door and Pete is expertly dicing onions. Grandma’s got him wearing her floral wallpaper apron, the one that’s usually Donny’s, and the man’s masculinity doesn’t seem at all assaulted, which is really just a crime against everything good in this world, especially Donny, because he can’t wear that dumb thing without feeling like a fool. It’s funny--the apron fits Pete well, if a little snug. The man’s average-sized, maybe even a little slender in some places, but his presence fools Donny every time. He expected him to dwarf the apron, like tacking a handkerchief to a cinderblock wall. Huh.

Donny still feels small. “What’re we making?” he asks, to get his mind off of that.

“Plátano maduro, _cariño._ ”

There’s butter sizzling in the old high-sided pot. Donny stands on his tiptoes to see if there’s anything in there other than that--Grandma gently whacks him with her spoon. _“Get me the ground beef from the fridge,”_ she says in Spanish, and as he turns to do that, she continues. And says something absolutely mortifying about Pete. Donny chokes on thin air.

Pete, in that dumb floral apron, glances at him. “Everything okay, kid?”

“Yeah,” he strangles out. _“Grandma!”_

She only laughs. When he hands her the package of ground beef, she looks like she’s gonna say something else, but she doesn’t, and it’s a good thing too, because Donny would probably have a heart attack and then they’d spend the evening in the ER and Grandma would spiral further into debt than they had already--and Pete wouldn’t get to eat what was basically the best thing ever (though Donny may be biased because he loves the combination of sweet plantains and savory ground beef).

Grandma starts the plantains boiling and sets a timer. “Move, both of you. Let’s go sit.”

*

Once they’re all sitting around the table, Grandma grabs one of Pete’s large hands with her bony fingers and one of Donny’s. Pete blinks.

Grandma looks at him expectantly. “We’re saying Grace, Pete.”

He hums and very gingerly takes Donny’s hand, like he’s afraid of hurting him.

She begins _en el nombre del Padre, del Hijo, y del Espiritu Santo, Amén._

_“Bendícenos Señor, bendice estos alimentos que por tu bondad vamos a recibir, bendice las manos que los prepararon dale pan al que tiene hambre y hambre de ti al que tiene pan. Amén.”_

“Amen.”

Pete just kind of nods along, but it seems to be enough for Grandma. They break and cut squares of plátano maduro. The cheese crisped on the top but stayed gooey farther in, and long strings stretch from the spatula to their plates. Fragrant steam plumes up into the chilly apartment, and when Donny glances at Pete there’s a little of something sad in his eyes.

“Looks great, ma’am. Thanks so much for making it.”

Grandma looks up from her plate. She’s cutting her piece into smaller chunks so it’ll cool faster. “You both helped.” She turns to Donny. “He’s better help in the kitchen than you are, _cariño,”_ she adds, but then she laughs so Donny knows it’s not meant to hurt. He smiles. Pete’s grinning too.

“Where are you from, Pete?” Grandma asks, adjusting her large, tortoiseshell glasses.

His eyes crinkle up at the corners. “I’m getting interrogated, huh?”

“It’s my job.”

He shrugs, like he did in the car when Donny asked him that question. “Queens.”

“What brings you out here?”

He tries the food before he answers. “Uh, work. This is great.”

“Glad you’re enjoying it,” she says, and tucks in.

*

Curtis wakes to the sound of his window shutting and he’s halfway to the gun under his pillow before a gruff voice cuts in,

“Relax Curtis, it’s me.”

Like that makes him feel any better. “Frank? The fuck you doing in here at--” he checks his phone, and the screen momentarily blinds him before he sees the time, “--two in the morning?” He blinks away the echoes of the bright screen and sees Frank’s silhouette standing at the foot of his bed. There’s something in his hands.

“I was in the area,” he said. “Brought you breakfast.”

Curtis lets his head flop back against his pillow. “I thought we agreed you wouldn’t do this anymore.” Then he remembers where Frank was and levers himself up. “You brought me leftovers?”

He can barely see it, but the man nods.

“We both know you coulda just put it in my fridge and left. You here to talk?”

Hesitation. “Yeah.”

Couldn’t this wait until tomorrow? But Curtis sighs. He’s on-call for Frank just like he’s on-call for his other vets, even if they keep their interruptions to phone calls. “Lemme put my leg on.” He almost asks Frank to make coffee, but then he remembers the nasty, tarry stuff that came of that last time Frank was here, and thinks better of it.

“I also have your book,” Frank says, quieter.

He buckles on the prosthetic and turns on the bedside lamp. Frank looks better than he has in weeks. “Been a while since I loaned it to you.”

“Like I said. Slow reader.”

Curtis doesn’t believe that for a second. Or, well, when he knew him, Frank was at least average. With the revelations from his trial...the guy got shot in the head. Who knows what the hell kind of damage he has up there now. “I appreciate you bringing it back.” He stands, and moves past his old friend to get to the kitchen.

“I enjoyed it,” Frank says quietly after him. “Nice uh, prose.”

He feels a smile tugging at his lips as he scoops (sneakily-packaged decaf) coffee grounds into the machine. “Didn’t know you knew that word,” he teases. He hears Frank come up beside him.

Frank smacks his shoulder with the book. It’d hurt if Frank wanted it to--as it stands, it’s more like a gentle press. “Yeah, asshole. You keep lending me books I’m gonna get real smart.”

“Like I told Lewis at group,” he says, pouring in water and shutting the lid, “books are great but they don’t hold all the answers.”

“Lewis? Haven’t heard that name before.”

Curtis steps back to lean against the island counter. “Yeah, he’s new. Kid’s messed up, drives a cab all night. I suspect,” and here he looks Frank pointedly in the eye, “he talks to himself in the mirror.”

“You think you’re subtle, but you’re not.”

Curtis wasn’t trying to be subtle--subtle doesn’t get through Frank’s damn thick skull--so he only raises an eyebrow and goes to sit on the couch. “How was dinner?”

Frank shrugs. “Fine. Met a nice little old lady. Tried plantains.”

Good. He’s trying new things, getting out, meeting people. That’s progress. Curtis nods and waits for him to elaborate, but, as usual, he doesn’t. Oh well. Figures. “Were they any good?”

Another shrug.

“Y’know, you keep shrugging and your shoulders’ll stick up by your ears.”

Frank rolls his eyes, but he finally sits down. “Sure, Ma.”

“I’m serious,” Curtis says, but he ruins it with his own smile. The air starts to fill with the aroma of coffee. He pushes his thumbs together. “When was the last time you sat down for a dinner like that? With other people?”

He can see Frank stop himself from shrugging. “Dunno.”

“That’s good you went, then. No, shut up, I’m glad you went. You’re doing good things for yourself. Like interacting with living, breathing people.” Something occurs to him. “Have you been up all night?”

Frank does this thing, with his head, when he wants to avoid a question. He does that now. “I uh, y’know, I.”

Curtis opens his mouth.

“Don’t mother me. I’m too old to get mothered.”

“Man, I don’t wanna mother you. I just want you to get some rest.”

Frank says nothing for a minute. “I see them, when I close my eyes.”

Maria and the kids? Or the men he lost out on duty? Either way, the answer’s the same. “You still need sleep.” Frank is broodily silent, and Curtis doesn’t feel like putting up with this right now. “It’s not your fault, Castle. Don’t be a wallowing asshole.” He stretches and stands.

“Where’re you going?”

“To get you some blankets. You’re staying over. I don’t think you should be driving right now.”

“I just told you not to mother me! Besides, I just drove here. I’ll be fine.”

He fixes the other man with a Look. “You need rest, Frank.” He turns and heads down the hall. “You better be here when I get back!” he calls.

“You’re the worst, Curtis!” Frank calls back.

Curtis can live with that.

*

“Well look who it is,” the guy--Paulie--spits, “Captain Batshit.”

The calluses on Frank’s hands itch. He wants to take his thermos and smash it into the side of his head. The hardhat would be an obstacle but it wouldn’t take much to unseat it from that big, bald, asshole head.

“Were you listening to us? Huh?”

Not by choice. If Frank had a choice, if earplugs didn’t make him so damn liable to swing his hammer into another guy coming up behind him, he’d wear ‘em everywhere. Too much noise. Too many people thinking they’re hot shit.

He sets down his thermos, picks up his hammer, and stands. Oh wait. Paulie’s still talking. “...gonna get hurt, gimp.”

He could laugh. The guy’s probably won a lot of fights with brute force, but there’s only so far that can take you. But still, he doesn’t want to get arrested fighting. It’d blow his cover. Frank moves to leave--has to leave now or he might not stop himself, his hands might move by themselves--but the idiot fucking stands in his way. 

Things were a lot easier when he was the Punisher. People didn’t do this shit. His grip on the sledgehammer tightens.

“Oh, you wanna do something with that hammer? Huh? You wanna--you wanna do something?What do you wanna do? You wanna take me? I'm right here.” Paulie leans in, tries to loom, like it’s supposed to be threatening. “I ain't going anywhere. And I will mess you up without breaking a sweat.” His breath smells like peppermint dip. It’s tempting to just kill him right now, but then there’s a crash and someone’s screaming.

He follows the sound--everyone within earshot does. Something fell, Frank doesn’t feel like trying to see what it was, but Paulie’s friend--whatever the hell his name is--is clutching his arm and screaming like a child. Frank doesn’t blame him. It’s a compound fracture. But he isn’t feeling especially warm and fuzzy towards Paulie and his groupies right now and it’s hard to dredge up sympathy.

Suddenly Donny is barreling in and imploring him--adding to the damn racket--to help, but Frank isn’t feeling like a good guy today, and so he turns on his heel and he leaves. The ambulance’ll be here soon anyway.

And if he burned a bridge with Donny? He burned a bridge with Donny. No skin off his nose.

_Yeah, you just keep telling yourself that. Maybe one day it’ll come true._

That voice in his head sounds suspiciously like Curtis. 

Frank goes home to sleep off that awful feeling in his stomach, that feeling like he’s just fucked up something good.

*

Madani retreats to her room after talking with her mother. She loves her, but the woman knows exactly what she does when they have conversations like this. She just picks and picks and picks, and the worst part is that she knows when to stop but she doesn’t. So Madani’s in her room.

It’s not like Mom didn’t have some good points. It’s not like she doesn’t care about Madani. But it doesn’t seem like she acknowledges her daughter is an adult--at least doesn’t think of adulthood in the same way. 

Madani wants to get under her pristine covers and go to sleep, but she has work to do, so she pulls out her laptop and starts digging through her files again. She almost hopes someone has spyware on it--let them find her, let them come to her. She’ll blow their fucking heads off and expose whatever it is they’re hiding on Kandahar.

Remember: animal teeth, bared strong. Determination. Resilience. She’s ready to blacken her shoulder with her shotgun’s kickback. She’ll wear the bruise as a badge: _look at what I did. Look at what I did for you, Ahmad. Look at what I’m willing to do, you fuckers, look!_ For a sudden, paralyzing moment, she knows she would have no regrets if she killed the man who’d given the order to shoot Ahmad. She would have no regrets if she killed the man who’d shot Ahmad. She would have no regrets if they killed her right back--what is she supposed to do with her soul, anyway, now that a part of it is cauterized black and shriveled?

Keep working. Keep working, and keep moving.

Madani starts a search through for keywords. Maybe she’ll find something she hasn’t before. Maybe it’s time to do some real legwork.

She gets out a pad of paper and a pen from her nightstand drawer and begins to take down all the names that aren’t redacted. Maybe there’s something she’s missing. Some _one._

*

_The bedroom door opens and she’s a vision, she’s an angel, she’s a goddess wearing a dress he’s never seen before, and her warm brown eyes melt into him and her smile is cold and tired and all teeth, the kind of love that never lets go. He reaches up. He touches her face and his hands meet ice, meet stone, meet clay: it’s as close to skin as he’ll ever feel again. Hair brushes over his arms like blue-hot wire and he wants to scream because he knows what’s coming, he knows he knows he knows--_

_Maria turns. He widens his eyes for one last taste of her, one last bit of her unmarred in his vision before--_

_And then comes the shot, and she is lifeless meat, red scattered on the wall--and he will find two more little bodies before the day is out, and he will leave his soul, his skin, his_ life _in that house._

Frank wakes up. He always does. He’s never expected anything different from this hopeless bullshit.

He decides to go smash things for a while.

*

Donny’s terrified, he’s fucking scared shitless and the side of his face is one giant brand and he can’t breathe and he’s fucking drenched in cement so he screams, he screams and he doesn’t care what comes out because anything is better than keeping quiet. He thinks he might be screaming for his father.

And then the first body drops, face smashed in so he can’t tell who it is. 

And then the second. Same way.

The splash from each gets the concrete in his mouth and he spits, swipes his thumbs over his eyes.

Faintly he hears someone begging, a “please no don’t,” and even over the machinery he can hear the meaty crunch of something blunt hitting home.

A rope comes down, but Donny’s too scared to take it. Whatever’s up there is coming for him next, and the rope’s a trap, it’s gotta be a trap--

And then the mixer turns off, abruptly.

And a familiar, gravelly voice says, “Why don’t you get outta there, kid. Before it sets and I have to use a jackhammer.”

Donny’s knees almost give out and let him sink under the weight of the quickly-hardening concrete.

A couple of hands appear at the lip of the basin, and Pete hauls himself up with a grunt. His face is spattered with blood and chunks of meat, yellow chips of bone. His eyes are wild, manic, serene. Donny almost pukes. Pete reaches a hand over. His grip is tight, and even with the slick concrete he manages not to slip as he pulls Donny up.

Donny feels like a dead man walking. He starts to choke out a “thanks,” but Pete just shakes his head and leads him back to his van. He grabs a big folded bundle out of the back and spreads what turns out to be a tarp over the passenger seat. 

“Get in,” he says. Donny obeys, because there’s not much else to do.

They stop at a convenience store first, where Pete picks up some vinegar and baby shampoo while Donny waits in the car. The concrete crusts on him and starts to burn. He lets blood drip into his eyes.

Pete drives them both to a relatively quiet block of buildings and kicks open a fire hydrant. Donny wasn’t aware that you could do that with just a boot, but he doesn’t think about it. He doesn’t want to think about anything. Grandma could be getting murdered right now because he brought his fucking--his fucking driver’s license, and--

“C’mere, kid. Rinse off the worst of it before we go upstairs.”

He can see Pete trying to soften his expression, but it’s not--it’s not his dad’s face, his dad didn’t come to save him, just this gruff man doing his best not to scare him even though he probably--fuck, he probably killed Paulie, and Leo, and Lance, and that’s their blood on his face, their guts and bone. Pete’s not a man. He’s a demon.

A large, strong hand grabs his shoulder and hauls him into the freezing spray. “Sorry, kid.”

He gasps, but the cold almost shocks him into something like action, and then he’s desperately wiping down his clothes and his neck and his arms, trying to get the cement off.

The hand stops him again, and he realizes he’s shivering. “Let’s go up, huh?”

Pete unlocks the front door of the building and they head inside, fire hydrant still spraying a shush of white noise over Donny’s hammering heart. He gets into an elevator for the first time in...a while, and he can feel himself dripping inch by inch into the spongey carpet. “Gramma,” he says, and rubs his nose. He can’t look at Pete’s face. “They’re gonna--they’ll find her.”

The doors open. “Worry about that after you get cleaned up, okay?”

He stands mute in the elevator until that hand--Pete’s hand--presses gently between his shoulderblades and pushes him, step by stumbling step, up to a door. Donny doesn’t see the number. He only wants to see the backs of his eyelids, dizzy and exhausted and too numb to be scared of his probable demise at those large, strong hands holding him up.

“No, nonono kid don’t--”

He snaps to attention when there’s hot water streaming down his shoulders. His wet clothes are heavy even though he’s sitting at the bottom of a shower.

Pete emerges from the dim on the other side of the curtain. He’s still bloody, but he has a bottle of soap and a bottle of vinegar in each hand and a rag on his arm. “Okay, gonna start with the vinegar and finish with the soap.”

There’s a long pause, and he realizes Pete’s waiting for a response. He nods.

“Vinegar’s gonna sting wherever your face is open.” Pete is already crouching down, though, kneeling in the spray with him. He wets the rag with vinegar and starts on Donny’s scalp. “They really got you good, huh?”

One of his eyes is swelling shut, so he guesses they did. “Gramma--”

“Don’t worry about her, okay? I’m taking care of it.”

Donny doesn’t really want to know what Pete means by that.

*

Once he’s mostly clean, Pete turns off the shower, tosses him some clothes, and tells him to take the bed, that Pete won’t be needing it tonight. Donny lies down and passes out on top of the tightly-folded sheets.

He wakes up to a bag of frozen peas and a bowl of instant oatmeal, the kind with the little apple bits in it and the cinnamon sugar that’s just a little on the salty side. His head hurts, his ribs hurt; patches of his skin feel raw, like someone’d splashed him with boiling water last night.

He sits up and there’s Pete, splayed out on the floor fiddling with something. He reeks like gun oil and sweat, obviously hasn’t bothered to shower or change clothes since whatever the hell he was doing last night. Pete doesn’t even look up, just keeps on with whatever he’s doing and says, “Your grandma’s safe. You can go home if you want.” He does look up, then, and there’s something intensely satisfied in his eyes when he does. Something that cringes away when he looks at Donny’s face. “You’re gonna need a story for, uh,” he gestures at Donny, “all that. Don’t think you’re concussed--they mostly got you in the ribs, weren’t wearing the hard boots anyway. But uh, yeah. You’re gonna need a story.”

It’s the most he’s ever heard Pete speak at one time.

“I took care of it,” the other man says, and goes back to scrubbing off what looks like the meanest knife Donny’s ever seen, what with the serrated edge and the razored tip. He hadn’t seen it clearly before because the blade’s matte black; nothing to glint in the early morning light and warn Donny that his impromptu host has the damn thing. “Nobody knows you were there.” A beat. Pete puts the knife down. “That was the dumbest fucking thing I’ve ever seen anyone do, you know that? And I’ve seen some stupid shit in my lifetime.”

“I--”

“Nope, shut up. You are responsible for making sure that sweet little old lady doesn’t keel over and die, and if you went missing? I bet she’d have a fucking stroke.”

A little spark of rage catches in Donny’s throat. “I _was_ making sure she doesn’t keel over--what do you think that money was for? We don’t have insurance, jackass, and her medicine costs the same as our rent! I can’t make that kind of money just working construction! Nowhere that pays good money'll hire some dumbass with a record.”

Pete pauses. “Yeah, okay.” He takes a breath. “Okay.” He begins to put the knife and all the other stuff away. “Eat your oatmeal.”

Donny’s not hungry, so he checks his phone for texts. Three missed calls from Grandma and a news report from _the Bulletin_ that sends chills through his beaten body: **Five Dead in Little Italy Apparent Murder-Suicide**  
He knows exactly who’s dead before he even reads the full article. And he knows who did it.

What kind of a fucking terrible judge of character is he, that he let this man near his grandma?

Pete looks at him. Donny looks away.

“Well,” the other man says, “you can leave anytime.”

Donny hears something clink.

“And you can go ahead and call the cops; don’t really give a shit. I’ll be gone before they get here, though.”

He breaks, and looks at Pete, doesn’t think taking his eyes off him is wise. 

“In fact,” The man stands, looks a little sore on his feet like an old pitbull, “I think I’ll get outta your way now. Take whatever you want from the fridge. I’m not coming back.” Pete gives him a hard look, then, and for the second time he turns on his heel and he walks away.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> David needed some leverage, okay? He needed some leverage so he looked up the Punisher’s past associates, because he still hadn’t gotten that call and he had a feeling Castle was gonna find him before that phone was getting any use whatsoever. So he looked through some lists and came up with the nice people at Nelson and Murdock.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...canon divergence...
> 
> Thank you to the wonderful people who commented!!! Y'all are amazing and you motivate me to write and I really appreciate it!!!! <3

When David makes the call, he’s not sure what he’s expecting. The man was on trial for killing thirty seven people--that they know of! But Frank Castle is his only option.

He gets...he gets the scenario he’d planned for, which isn’t good, but isn’t bad either. At least Castle’s willing to engage with him. 

When the other man rushes out onto the roof opposite him, he’s not sure he made the right decision, but hell, this is his life now, apparently. David adjusts his sunglasses and tries to look nonchalant, casual, like the figure across the street isn’t terrifying. He’d scrambled up there quicker than David had thought he would, and he’s staring, now. He’s staring and even if David weren’t looking at him he thinks he would feel it regardless. Even from so far away, his presence is palpable. The hoodie’s probably an attempt to look innocuous, but if this isn’t his imagination? If _everyone_ can feel the aura of violence Castle gives off? The man might as well be wearing body armor for how intimidating he is.

David didn’t realize someone could loom at you from across a busy street, but Castle really fucking looms.

His gloves are damp with sweat, but he bites down hard on his cheek and gives the Punisher a jaunty little wave, then skips off merrily to where his little blue sedan is waiting.

Holy shit.

Part of him is hoping that Castle _doesn’t_ call, because being in that choking presence for any more time, at any shorter distance--that’s a horrible thought.

Though he guesses you don’t kill thirty seven people without attracting some bad shit to your soul.

David grits his teeth and thinks of Sara, of Leo, of Zach.

He breathes out, and waits for the call.

*

That just fucking ruined his fucking eggs. They were good, too; crispy whites and yolk so runny they might as well have been raw. It’d always be a mystery to him how diners managed that. So Frank is grouchy as all fuck, almost just stomps on the phone to be done with it--but he doesn’t know what else this Micro idiot has on him.

Funny--he’s okay with the world knowing his exploits as the Punisher, but Kandahar is private, a little evil creature stuck close to his ribs and slowly poisoning him from the inside out. Frank can’t tell people about that. He has no excuse for that. No amount of dead family can justify it. Chain of command was the excuse everyone would use, the excuse he _wants_ to use, but it’s bullshit and he knows it. Apparently, so does Micro.

Micro knows he’s alive. Micro addressed him as a fellow dead man.

He has to find out who the hell this guy is, and who the hell told him about Frank.

*

There’s something about Billy Russo that sets Madani’s teeth on edge. Maybe it’s the fact that he’s a soldier, and men who are trained to kill are--well, they’re fucking scary. She feels weak for thinking so, but Russo takes up space just by breathing, just by standing still in a room, and when he zeroes in on her she can feel his eyes go through her. He’s sizing her up. He knows why she’s here.

Madani doesn’t know whether she’s sick or excited to engage with him. The guy was in Frank Castle’s unit. She wants to know what kind of person the US military molded in Kandahar. She could only know so much from her spot in Homeland. Russo can tell her a lot, if she plays this right.

She smiles, and shakes his hand.

*

“Hey pretty lady, you got any change? I’m real hungry.”

Karen pauses, first at the voice, which is a little familiar, but then at the sight of the poor guy. He keeps his cap tilted low and his hoodie is ratty. He looks cold. He looks hunched, and defeated, and tired. She’s never been hungry like that, but she sympathizes all the same. She digs through her purse and drops a few quarters into the guy’s outstretched cup, and moves to keep walking.

“Thanks Karen,” he says, and she stops short, hand going to her pistol. He tilts up his cap, and there’s--there’s Frank. Shit. He looks...mischievous. She wants to fucking kill him for scaring her like that. Karen studies him a little closer--he’s grown a beard and his hair’s past what she imagines was regulation. The shape of his face hasn’t changed one bit--hard planes and blunted angles--but details like new scars are hard to make out. He smiles at her, almost sincere, and says “You’re still all heart, huh?”

She feels suddenly angry. It’s probably justified. The worry she feels pulling between her eyebrows, though, is unreasonable and she knows it. Still, she asks him anyway: “Things got this bad, Frank?” She doesn’t say he could’ve come to her for help. It would be a lie.

Frank shrugs. “Wanted to say hello. Thought I’d try my luck out here and not get my head blown off.” Then he grins, like that’s funny. Karen supposes that to him, it would be. He continues. “Still got that hand cannon?”

She taps her purse with her free hand and tries to sound a little threatening. “You better believe it.” Karen doesn’t want to get caught up in any more of this bullshit. She’s already lost a friend to it; she doesn’t want to lose another. She knows she will, though, and it will be easier to deal with it if she doesn’t get involved, can say with all honesty in the future that she never knew a thing.

“Attagirl.”

That’d sound patronizing coming from anyone else, but he seems genuinely glad that she has it. Good. He’d be a giant hypocrite otherwise. But time to get down to business--he’s obviously here for that. She lets her face shut down, lets him see how pissed she is and lets him figure out why. “The hell do you want?”

Frank gets serious. “Can we talk?”

Karen shrugs. What other choice does she have?

The next thing she knows, she’s wheedling Ellison into giving her an article Carson Wolf “asked” him not to publish. The things she does for Frank. Making herself a target, though, is freeing somehow. It pushes back her boundaries, diversifies the actions she can be excused for taking, and sharpens her focus more than coffee ever could.

So Karen looks for the article, and she finds David Lieberman.

*

Sarah Lieberman hugs Leo close and bites her tongue. Zach’s going to that movie anyway, she knows it, but she’s at a loss.

God, she misses David.

 

*

David needed some leverage, okay? He needed some leverage so he looked up the Punisher’s past associates, because he still hadn’t gotten that call and he had a feeling Castle was gonna find him before that phone was getting any use whatsoever. So he looked through some lists and came up with the nice people at Nelson and Murdock. He was originally gonna go with Murdock--how hard is it to intimidate a blind guy--but Murdock was...dead. Or missing. Or something. David didn’t remember because he was lost in a haze. 

He could’ve gone with Nelson, but looking at the footage of the Punisher trials, the security feed from Castle’s hospital room, he realized he’d need to go for their paralegal, Karen Page.

David doesn’t like to threaten women.

He gets her address anyway.

Doesn’t look like she works for the firm anymore--doesn’t look like it even exists anymore. He briefly considers that, and then he taps his toes, clicks through a few pages until he finds her most recent work in the New York Bulletin: **Five Dead in Little Italy Apparent Murder Suicide.** He knows who caused that. 

David grimaces. A note pops up on his monitor--says she’s registered conceal carry for a .380. He bites his lip.

Castle, from the looks of the footage, barely said a word to Nelson _or_ Murdock. Page is his only option if he wants to get results.

Before he grabs his shit and leaves, he takes one last look at the monitors, flicks through them quickly. He expects nothing out of the ordinary. But what would his life be, if not a thousand times more difficult than it ever needed to be?

*

It happens so fast; Sarah’s listening to the radio, pulling up in the driveway; then out of nowhere her car hits something very solid and coffee paints up her windshield. Her heart drops through her stomach and her skin goes hot. Oh, shit. Oh, _shit._

She leaves the keys in the car when she scrambles out of her seat. Who the hell did she hit?

The man’s already attempting to stand, using the hood of her car as leverage to pull himself up. Sarah is frozen. She takes in a wild beard and hair past the ears--is he homeless? Would a homeless guy be wandering in these suburbs? Doesn’t matter, because he’s bleeding. But still, she’s frozen for a good three more seconds. He looks relatively clean, and as he stands he looks like he’s done some hard work in his life--all around a respectable-looking man. But something in her is keeping her paralyzed, telling her not to get any closer. Could be the way he looks so sturdy as he’s pushing himself up, like his deep stance is intentional. Could be the man’s forearms or the feral edges of his face or--

No. No, he’s bleeding, so Sarah is going to do her damndest to help him out.

Even if his face looks a little like the face of a dead man she’s seen too many times on the news.

She finally regains control of her limbs and catches him under the elbow. “I’m so sorry!”

He only leans on her a little bit as he finally stands and collects his coffee cup. “No, nah, it’s--”

“I didn’t see you! A-are you okay? I’m so sorry!”

The edges of his mouth turn up like she said something funny. Sarah can’t quite call it a smile. “Don’t worry about i--”

“No, you’re bleeding. Come inside, please.” She’s already tugging him towards the house, instincts be damned.

*

David bites his fist. “No, no no no no _no!”_ That man--that _monster_ \--had ferreted out his family, had found out his name and gone in to kill them all. His stomach cramped. No, no no no. He never should’ve done this. He should have figured out a way to get his life back that didn’t involve Frank fucking Castle, because the fucker was gonna take away any chance he had of it anyway!

Now, at least, he knows what he has to do. David says a quick prayer for forgiveness, a quick prayer for safety, then he packs up his gun and he’s off. Against the Punisher, it’ll be suicide, but he’s already died for his family once. This time it’ll just be permanent.

*

Frank takes in the house. There’s no way Micro--Lieberman, whatever--doesn’t have cameras all over the place. The guy’s style struck him as too paranoid to let his family live unmonitored while he was “dead.”

Frank knows exactly what he’s here to do: to show Lieberman he knows where his wife and kids live. He’d never kill them, but Lieberman doesn’t have to know that. It’s always good to have a little leverage. And besides, if Frank does something Lieberman-adjacent that could hurt the guy’s family...maybe he’ll have time to swing by and help them get somewhere safe. Maybe. Sometimes it’s just best to leave things be, but this city doesn’t need two Punishers running a rampage through its guts.

He finishes cleaning up in the bathroom and pads into the living room, fully intending to say a quick goodbye and just slip out. His job is done.

He doesn’t count on Mrs. Lieberman--Sarah--shoving a mug of coffee into his hands and starting a conversation. The subject moves to family, and then Sarah’s lying about David, and then she’s apologizing again. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I was going to lie.” And she looks suddenly nervous, like she’s not sure if Frank will retaliate for the little fib. She looks, behind her quiet eyes, scared.

Frank feels like an intruder. He feels like he never should’ve come here. “Yeah, uh. I get it. Uh. Must be difficult. You, uh, you have a strange man in the house, and he’s not your--” He cuts off at Sarah’s frown and sets his mug on the kitchen table. Their fridge has a near-perfect-scoring test stuck to it with a bright magnet. Pictures of smiling kids adorn the walls and counter. Frank doesn’t belong here. “I’ll take off, alright? Just--”

“No, no, no, no, it’s okay,” Sarah says. He stops, and wonders, for just a second, if it’s her way of trying to mitigate disaster. If she’s really that lost and afraid without Lieberman, so afraid she would try to keep a stranger pleased in her home instead of telling him to get out and risk his anger. She continues in the same breath and Frank decides it’s not important. “Please, sorry. Finish your coffee. Please.”

So many sorries. She really hadn’t hurt him. He leaves his mug where it is, but decides to add another sorry to the pile and grumbles out a “Sorry for your loss” anyway. 

Frank hears a car pull up. Could that be Lieberman, finally pulling his pasty ass out of hiding? It’s too good to be true.

Regardless, he decides to stay a few more minutes, see if the guy’ll come to him. It’d be a welcome change from the shit he normally gets.

*

David speeds off before he sees Castle go, but after he realizes the man’s not going to try anything. Time to go find Karen fucking Page. It’s clear he’s gonna need her.

*

Karen wakes up to a small shuffling sound, just to her right. She tenses before she can think, but whoever the hell just broke into her apartment doesn’t notice. It’s not Frank. Frank would have knocked. She wishes she were like Matt, could tell between people just by their sound and smell, but she’s not and it’s dark with her blackout curtains blocking the city light, and if she moves she could get shot--

Karen bites her tongue. Nobody’s coming for her. She can’t use her phone, and nobody’s coming for her. Karen hopes for one futile second that Frank will burst through the door like an action hero and save her, but. It’s not happening. Then the adrenaline clears a little, and she sees the next logical course of action. She sleeps with a gun under her pillow; if she can get to it she’ll be safe.

So Karen sighs, like she’s stirring in her sleep. The shuffling stops.

She rolls over and slides a hand under her pillow, but doesn’t make another move until the noise from the other person starts again, to cover her exhale of relief when her hand meets a cool rubberized grip, to cover the click of the thumb safety going off. She moves--fast--and hits the light switch next to her bed.  
The gun is up in the next breath. Her finger is on the trigger, hands still. The man looking into the muzzle is close enough to go down easily. He looks familiar.

She speaks, and she almost recognizes her own voice. Almost. “The hell are you doing in my apartment?”

His eyes are locked on her front sight. “Castle.” He slowly raises his hands above his head, and she belatedly realizes she never said to do it.

“Frank Castle is dead.” He just gives her a long look. First, Karen’s just not intimidated. Then she sees why he’s familiar. Sure, his hair’s grown out like a dandelion and his face is gaunter, bags under his eyes where there should be none, but-- “David Lieberman?”

He blinks sharply. “Uh.”

If this was Lieberman, he already knew about Frank. “What do you want with Frank?”

He relaxed an increment. Karen kept her finger on the trigger. “I need his help.”

Several possibilities race through her head. He could be lying.

He might not be. Nobody who’s not desperate provokes the Punisher.

Still, she’s kicking herself for not telling him to put his hands on his head, so she decides to give the guy the full runthrough. “Are you armed?”

“I--”

“Are you armed, David?”

His eyes close briefly. “Yes.”

“Where’d you stow it?”

“...Back of my waistband.”

That’s a dumbshit move if she’s ever seen one. The guy may be armed, but even Karen knows he has no idea how to handle a weapon. She moves her finger off the .380’s trigger and inches around him. It’s still pointed at his head. Standing, he’s probably over six feet. She can’t afford to risk getting overpowered.

“Kneel down, please,” she says.

He complies.

There’s a pistol tucked into the back of his jeans, just like he said it was.

Karen moves in to take it.

He grabs her hair suddenly with hands that moved back like lightning, tugs down.

Karen shoots. 

The angle is wrong; she misses, but he lets go and staggers back anyway.

She has both guns, now, and releases the magazine on his. It sticks a little on the way out. “The fuck was that?”

“You don’t understand, if I don’t have leverage he won’t--”

“Then _talk_ with me! Don’t fucking do whatever the hell it was that you just did!”

“You have a gun pointed at my head!”

“Because you broke into my fucking apartment!”

David slumps. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry’s not going to cut it.”

“I know. But I need Castle to help me. I wanna see my family again. The same people who took his tried to kill me. You know what happened.”

Karen considers long and hard, then flicks the safety back on and turns on her heel, marching towards the kitchenette. “Do you like eggs, David?”

_“What?”_


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Frank is...burning. He’s burning so hot he’s cold. He doesn’t know what happened, but he knows that Karen called him on the phone Lieberman gave him. He knows that Karen has a hell of a pistol, that she’s making eggs like nothing’s wrong, but even as he climbs up the fire escape he can’t help the feeling that he’s freezing and melting at the same time, that someone’s gonna die.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A very short, transitional chapter. Sorry this took so long, and sorry it's not longer. Thank you all for your thoughtful, kind comments.
> 
> I'm a full-time college student with a mean combination of issues that're gonna make it difficult to get chapters out in a timely fashion, but I'm trying!! I really love telling this story and I'm excited to make more of it. Just--when I have to budget my energy, I hope you understand that my classwork comes first (as much as I wish it didn't!).
> 
> Thank you all so much for your understanding and patience!! I hope to get more content to you soon.

Karen starts the butter heating in the pan. “The first thing we’re doing is we’re calling Frank.” She catches David turning to her incredulously.

“What??”

“David, you said you wanted to talk to him.”

“I said I needed leverage so we could negotiate. That’s not the same.”

Suddenly Karen is just. Very done. It’s three in the goddamn morning. She narrows her eyes and pushes her hair back behind her ear. “I don’t have time for this.” She grabs the pan and swirls it so the butter coats it. “We’re calling Frank.”

“He’ll kill me!”

She stifles a yawn and cracks an egg into the pan. “So you want him to help you but you’re so scared you can’t even stand to be in the same room with him?”

“He’s killed dozens of people!”

Karen is deeply unimpressed. She imagines Frank would be too. As much as she’s not happy having something in common with the guy... “And that’s why you want his help.”

“Yes.”

She decides to not comment on the double standard. Her perspective could be warped. “Look,” she begins, “if you have me with you, he’ll go easy.” Probably. “And we need to talk this out. So. You gave him a burner, right? Dial his number and hand me the phone.” She presses her lips together, catches the bottom one with her teeth.

It takes a moment, but David nods wordlessly and does as she asked. 

Karen flips the egg, phone tucked between her shoulder and her ear, and waits for Frank to pick up.

“The hell do you want, Lieberman? It’s three in the goddamn morning.”

“Hi,” she says.

“Karen?!” he shouts. From the way David flinches back, he’s heard too.

“Yeah, hi. Mind dropping by the apartment? I’ve got someone here who wants to talk to you.”

A growl. “Bet I can guess who it is.”

“Mm-hm. You want some eggs? They’ll be ready when you get here.”

She can almost feel the incredulous stare he’s no doubt giving her. “Did I hear that right?”

“Yeah. I’m making eggs.”

He’s obviously spinning his wheels here, if the long, long pause is any indicator of how shocked he is. Karen’s lips twitch of their own accord, and she presses a hand to her mouth to keep from laughing. Finally Frank breaks the silence. “Uh, sure.”

“Right, see you here in...?”

“Ten.”

She hangs up and slides the egg onto a plate. “David, you mind making a lot of toast?”

*

Frank is...burning. He’s burning so hot he’s cold. He doesn’t know what happened, but he knows that Karen called him on the phone Lieberman gave him. He knows that Karen has a hell of a pistol, that she’s making eggs like nothing’s wrong, but even as he climbs up the fire escape he can’t help the feeling that he’s freezing and melting at the same time, that someone’s gonna die.

He cups his hands around his face and peers through the window. No clear visual...yet.

A strong gust of wind smacks him in the side and he winces. No more time for recon. He knocks on the window.

Karen comes into view. She’s unharmed, as far as he can tell in the dim light, but he still feels sick deep in the pit of his stomach. There’s a tightness around her eyes that doesn’t smooth when she meets his gaze, and he looks away. Frank has only ever wanted to make her feel safe.

She unlocks the window and pushes it up with some effort. “Hi, Frank.”

He wastes no time swinging himself through the gap. “Where is he?” Rage boils his throat. How dare Lieberman. How dare he? 

“At the table,” Karen says, and then puts one slender hand to his chest. Frank stops short, no resistance to the long, chapped fingers resting on his sternum. “And we’re gonna talk this out.” She doesn’t let him pass just yet. “And you’re going to at least put down your guns, okay? I’m not going to ask for your knives, but I know you have them and I don’t like weapons at my table.”

He flashes teeth, but at her hard stare he acquiesces and begins to strip off his weaponry. First comes his jacket and the pistols in his shoulder holsters. He stows them in his backpack with _Ceremony,_ extra ammo, and his suppressor (he thinks he hears a granola bar crush under the weight, but he can’t be sure). He slowly disarms himself in front of her, trying hard to ignore the very obvious staring Lieberman’s doing.

Still, when Frank unsheathes the ka bar sitting horizontally at the small of his back, he looks Lieberman straight in the eye and only barely holds back his satisfaction when the man visibly cowers from the big knife.

He looks at Karen again. She’s stepped back. “That it?” she asks.

That’s all the slack he’s willing to give her, so in a manner of speaking, yes. Still, Frank can’t lie to her, so he just shrugs.

Karen seems to accept it and her posture relaxes in increments. “Your eggs are getting cold.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (the book Frank's carrying with him currently is Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko, and I *highly* recommend it if you get a chance to pick it up!)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pete lurks in the back of his head, a demon wearing a man’s face, a demon who decorates its mask with blood and brain and little yellowish chips of bone, who killed four grown men with a sledgehammer and didn’t even have the decency to fake horror when it finished. How many more people had Pete killed, in the Marines, to give his face that satisfied calm that still makes acid rise in Donny’s throat? How many people had Pete killed when he’d come home?
> 
> He swallows hard. That demon knows where he lives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, lookit that, I finally updated! Midterms are over, so I carved out some time and just wrote my ass off. Hopefully this all makes sense, because I just looked it over for typos and posted. Hopefully this is also the last chapter in which I have to use dialogue from the show, because I! Don't! Like! This! Thievery!!!!!
> 
> Anyway, enjoy, and thank you all for all your amazing comments! I appreciate them so much.
> 
> **Warnings for canon-typical violence, though if you're here I'm betting you're not terribly bothered by that.**

You don’t get too far in Homeland without the ability to read people; not even with Madani’s connections. And she can read Billy Russo like he’s the motherfucking Yellowpages. It was the slick charm and killer’s eyes that tipped her off when she met him, but at the little bar table, even as he gets a little slurry, the fact that he’s not let his guard down even once is worrying.

Madani thinks she can handle him, though. She’s not letting the pretty face distract her, and she’s checking her phone once every couple minutes to keep the illusion she’s not hanging on every word. Once Russo got that leverage over her, it would be over. He’d direct the conversation. 

For now, though, she has the upper hand, and so she asks, “This where you bring a girl when you’re trying to impress her?”

He gives her what she’s sure he thinks is a dazzling grin and says, “This is where I bring a girl when she’s gonna see through all that.”

Russo’s clever, she’ll give him that. Madani takes a sip of her drink before she answers; there are a lot of ways she could play that. “I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or not.”

“Depends; are you the kind of woman who takes offense at those?”

She keeps the smile mobile on her face. Asshole. She could throw a gentle barb back, something like “depends on who it’s from,” but she decides to just change the subject. “Last time I saw glasses this dirty, I was saying my farewells to Afghanistan.”

A grin just this side of contemptuous tugs at his lips. “Sounds like you miss it.”

Madani decides to go with something a little more gutsy. She smiles gently, slowly, and without a flash of teeth she says, “I do.”

Interest flares behind his eyes. It’s almost excitement. Almost respect. Almost. “Yeah? I couldn’t go back after my last tour, not in uniform.”

“You never said who you were with.”

The curve of his lips steepens. “I have a feeling if I say the right name, you’re gonna get a lot more interested in me.”

Madani sits back in her tall chair. “I’m glad I don’t have to spell it out for you, Mr. Russo.” She continued. “Marine Force Recon. Scout sniper specialist. One hundred-thirty four confirmed kills. Three tours of Iraq, one of Afghanistan.”

“You read my file.”

She can pinpoint the exact moment his guard drops, and she lets her smile soften. “I like to know who’s paying me compliments.”

Russo laughs, startled. The space around his eyes crinkles: it’s genuine. But then it smooths out again, and his eyes turn serious. “Do you need me for something?”

Madani’s not sure what her next move is. She sees a lot of different ways this could go. “...I think you could help me,” she says.

He leans forward, all big cat predatory focus, like he’s tuned everything else out. “Yeah?”

The hair on the back of her neck prickles, not quite raising. “You know I have some unfinished business. I want to take care of it.”

In an instant he’s leaning back in his seat, the picture of a tired, wary young man. It would soften Madani’s heart if she hadn’t just recited the broad strokes of his file to his face. “You want me to talk about my unit, huh?”

She nods.

“With all due respect, you’re a cop. I’m not about to throw shade on my friends.”

“You served with Frank Castle.”

He doesn’t even flinch. “Frank Castle was my best buddy.” Russo looks like he wants to say more, and there are months contained in the stare he directs over her shoulder. Probably nights upon nights in foxholes and houses, nights spent trying not to die, days scarfing down mediocre MREs (Meals, Rarely Edible, she’d once heard a middle-aged vet say) and sleeping what little they could in CHUs-- “There was nobody better’n him. I’m sorry that he’s dead.”

Could she push him? “He took a lot of people with him.”

Russo shrugs.

They sit in silence for a moment, but Madani decides to press on. “You shipped out. Castle didn’t.”

“You want me to tell you he was dirty?” Russo laughs, careless amusement flaring in his eyes. “You stay in war long enough, it all gets covered in shit. Ms. Madani, you of all people should know.”

She takes a breath. Time to really _shove._ “Dinah.”

“Sorry?”

“Call me Dinah, please.” She keeps eye contact just long enough to pull him in, then breaks it to sip her drink. She rolls her tongue across her lower lip. “Castle wasn’t the type to get involved in drugs out there, was he?” She phrases it like a statement, like she’s on Russo’s side, like she believes he’s a person just like the rest of them. Like he’s not a snake wearing human skin over its scales.

“He wasn’t.” He presses his lips together. “I think the system let Frank down in a big way.”

Madani nods. “He did what he was trained to do.”

Russo’s gaze flicks to her. He’s surprised. “Yeah. Yeah, I think he did.”

“If someone hurt my family, I’m not sure I wouldn’t do the same.” She lets a soft, understanding smile touch her eyes. Then she steals Russo’s drink.

His nose crinkles when he laughs. “Didn’t know you were a thief, Dinah.”

She takes a sip that looks longer than it is, leaves a careful ring of lipstick on the rim of the glass. Then she hands it back. “Ahmad Zubair was my family, Billy. You know what comes next.”

Russo sits back and slowly shakes his head. “Well played.”

Madani gives a light shrug. “I’m still looking for an answer.”

He lays down some cash on the table--tips well--and stands. Halfway to the exit, swinging his coat on, he seems to realize Madani’s still in her seat. Did he expect her to follow him? Russo jerks his chin in the direction of the doorway and grins. “You coming?”

She makes him wait one more beat before standing up as well, and heading out the door under his arm.

*

Donny can’t sleep. He’s been going through this the past couple nights, when his sheets feel like cement around him but it’s getting too cold to throw them off, when his eyes pop open no matter what he does like a baby doll when you sit it up.

Pete lurks in the back of his head, a demon wearing a man’s face, a demon who decorates its mask with blood and brain and little yellowish chips of bone, who killed four grown men with a sledgehammer and didn’t even have the decency to fake horror when it finished. How many more people had Pete killed, in the Marines, to give his face that satisfied calm that still makes acid rise in Donny’s throat? How many people had Pete killed when he’d come home?

He swallows hard. That demon knows where he lives.

Donny rolls over in bed and staggers to his feet. Sleep tonight isn’t looking like an easy prospect. He turns on his phone’s flashlight and wanders into the kitchen.

*

David just wants his family back. He just wants his family back. And now, because of that, the goddamn Punisher is watching him critically while he eats his eggs, and Karen Page--who apparently has a better hold on the guy than even David thought--is exchanging glances with the goddamn Punisher like they’re psychically connected or something. He grimaces and sets down his fork.

Castle speaks first. It’s a surprise, because the man never seems to make the first move, but here he is, doing that. His voice is hoarse, and when he’d come in the skin around his eyes had been taut with worry, and there are some nasty blisters on his palms he’s ignoring so he can eat his cheesy bell pepper-and-onion scramble. “Convince me.”

David blinks. “What?”

Castle sits back in the chair, and suddenly takes all the space and all the breath from the room. Well, not all. Karen is sitting and drinking orange juice like nothing’s changed, and she holds her own in the little kitchenette. David’s mildly horrified. But Castle’s sat back in his chair, arms spread, looking much bigger than he is, and he repeats: “Convince me you’re worth all this trouble.”

“The same...” he takes a breath. Speaking is suddenly very difficult, and he doesn’t know if it’s because he’s emotional or because he’s so scared. “The same guys who killed your family. Uh, Zubair. Ahmad Zubair, he found out what they were doing in Kandahar, so. The tape. Uh. I’m sorry. I didn’t think I’d get this far.”

Karen leans forward, her eyes soft and gentle. “You sent a tape to Frank. Why?”

He takes a deep breath. These specific questions are easier than Castle’s “convince me” bullshit. “I needed to get his attention. I want to work together.”

“To do what?”

“I want my family back. I just want to see my wife and my kids again.”

“David, you need to spell out the connection. Fill in the blanks for us.”

He can feel his hands shaking. He clasps them together. A prayer, poured into his hands. “The same organization that took me down took out his family.”

Karen frowns. “I thought it was a shootout. They got caught in the crossfire.”

“Somebody sure as hell made it look that way.” David presses his lips together. “And Ray Schoonover was getting his drugs from somewhere.”

Karen’s frown deepens. “You’re not explaining this very well.”

“Project Cerberus, the things Frank and his unit did in Kandahar, they weren’t authorized by the government like they told him.”

Castle looks up sharply. “Yeah?”

He nods.

Karen speaks again. “Cerberus?”

Frank’s the one who answers this time. “Will Rawlins told us it was a new branch of the military. Told us they were trying new tactics to end the war quicker, needed a good group of men leading the charge.”

“They were running heroin,” David finishes, “to Schoonover.”

*

If Karen has this right...oh boy, this is complicated. But a few things from last year are starting to make more sense. If she has this right:

1\. Frank and his family had to die after he found out about Schoonover pushing heroin and refused to help, so Schoonover executed them himself. But--  
2\. Schoonover was getting Frank’s help all along, albeit unknowingly.  
3\. Project Cerberus was run by a man named Will Rawlins, but Schoonover was Frank’s direct superior.  
4\. Rawlins was Schoonover’s superior, and he ran the unauthorized ring, used soldiers to kill whomever he needed dead so he could get the drugs.  
5\. The tape...?

She glances over at Frank. “What was on that tape David sent you?”

Frank goes very still. 

Somewhere off to her left, David twitches.

“Somethin’ Rawlins had us do,” Frank murmurs, and stares resolutely at his eggs.

Karen decides not to push it for now. “Okay David, why are you tangled up in this?”

The man pushes his eggs around his plate. “I saw the tape, put some things together, and I sent it to Homeland. And, I guess, it made it to the wrong people.”

She suddenly feels intensely sorry for the man. He was just trying to do the right thing.

David continues. “I need Frank’s help to take down these people for good. So they can’t hurt anybody else. So I can see my kids.”

Instead of saying anything right away, Frank...looks at her. He seems expectant. Does he want her to make the final decision? Karen takes a sip of her juice, pulse jumping into her throat. She didn’t sign up for these kinds of choices. But he keeps his eyes on hers, and she has to set her glass down at some point.

It all lines up. She looks at David. “Who’s the first person we’re checking?”

The man slumps with relief. She thinks he might be crying. Out of the corner of her eye, Frank straightens, and takes a deep breath.

David wipes at his eyes. “Carson Wolfe. He was working with Schoonover. God, thank you.”

Frank stands, abruptly.

“Where are you going?” Karen asks, though she thinks she might already know the answer.

Frank just raises an eyebrow. “Let you know when I’m done.”

*

Frank’s not taking any chances with this one, so he hits Carson Wolfe over the head while he’s sleeping--not enough to knock him out, which would be risky, but enough to stun him like a trout--and ties him to his bedside armchair. Or, at least, that’s the plan.

Truth is, he knows he shouldn’t be doing this now. His head’s too loud. He’s distracted. He feels too much like a person, coming back from Karen’s place.

He hits Wolfe over the head no problem, and he gasps soundlessly for a second, but the moment Frank takes his hands behind his back, the man’s kicking out behind him and catching Frank in the knee. Because of-fucking-course that’s what happens.

Wolfe’s heel hits him at an odd angle and there’s a sharp, tearing pain, but he’s gotta ignore it because the man’s leaping from the floor and at his face. Frank guards with his forearms and thrusts up with his elbow--Wolfe chokes, sharp joint hitting his clavicle. Frank doesn't give himself time to feel satisfied, just pushes him off his chest and swings to his feet; _don’t let them get you on the ground, don’t let them get you on the ground_ \--and he drives Wolfe into the wall, lamp knocking off the nightstand and cracking on the carpet.

He brings his fist up to hit Wolfe in the side of the face, but the man blocks and drops, driving his shoulder into Frank’s waist and Frank staggers back but he _doesn’t fall_. Instead, he hits where Wolfe left himself open: a sharp rap on the back of his head, and Wolfe is down. He takes half a second to draw his gun and suddenly there’s a lamp flying at his face, and the ceramic smashes on his forehead and rips his mask, and--fuck. _Fuck._ Carson Wolfe is running down the hall, taking the stairs three at a time. 

Frank is on the floor, knife still clutched tight in his hand. He rolls over, pain radiating through his sinuses and down into his teeth, and he almost spits. Can’t let Wolfe escape. He stands. Pain in his head. But he can’t fucking let Wolfe fucking escape. 

He dives down the stairs, but there’s no sign of the man anywhere. Shit. Frank doesn’t know this house, didn’t think he’d have to to get the job done. He grimaces and backs up under the stairs. He listens. He stands very still, and he listens. Even though it’s dark, the man’s bound to know his home, can probably move through it like it’s a finely tailored suit. But. But. All it takes is one slip, and the acoustics are very, very good in these marble-tiled houses.

Frank’s not hearing anything. Could Wolfe have made it outside? No. No, he wouldn’t have. He had his dignity. He wasn’t going to be seen as the man who called the cops on a home intruder, he was going to be seen as the man who caught the intruder. He wouldn’t try to escape entirely, he’d try to get the advantage. For the papers. For his status. For his subordinates.

Frank can respect that. He likes getting the advantage, too. ‘S why he quickly unloads his pistol and removes the bullets from the mag. He leaves one chambered. He breathes in sharply once, twice, and heads out into the house.

Gun control’s pretty strict in New York. He doesn’t know if Wolfe would’ve gone to the trouble of getting a permit when he could already carry as an agent, but if Frank knows these law-abiding assholes, he knows Wolfe’s gun would be locked up in a safe, away from its ammo. He also knows that a guy who fights like that would keep his gun loaded.

Weighing all these things in his head was fine, but that didn’t tell him where Wolfe would be. Didn't even tell him if the man had a gun. It was all nervous thought, and thinking in a fight gets you fucking killed. He breathes out.

Frank turns a corner.

And then he hears it: the soft pad of socked feet on marble behind him. Calm washes over him, his head goes empty as he whirls and grabs the gun out of Wolfe’s hands, tosses it away. He grins, and from the drained horror on Wolfe’s face he knows that something just _settled._ Frank scents blood, and anticipation throbs through him, and he catches Wolfe in the jaw with an uppercut that cracks teeth.

*

Carson sneaks up behind the masked man, heart pounding in his ears. He hasn’t felt this exhilarated in years, not since he got the big desk job and started ordering folks around. It’s a sick thing, to realize he’s enjoying this. He balances wrong and his heel slams down on the marble, and the man turns quick, too quick, and grabs his wrists together in one hand and tosses his Glock away with the other. Carson prepares to fight, but something in the intruder’s eyes stops him cold.

They are glittering, they are empty, and they are calm. It’s one of the most terrifying things he’s ever seen, and even though the ripped mask is covering the rest of the man’s face, Carson can just tell he’s smiling.

That one second of hesitation smashes him in the jaw with an uppercut like a sledgehammer, and he feels his teeth crack and blood burst in his mouth. The world goes black.

 

His bravado returns when he finds himself tied up in a chair. “Whoever you are,” he says, around the screaming pain in his broken teeth, “this is the stupidest thing you’ve ever done.” His mouth closes around the last word and his body is suddenly one big ache, and there’s blood dripping into his eyes. But as the figure approaches, he takes a breath and continues. “And it’s getting stupider every second.” Blood bubbles from his nose on the exhale. “You do know who I am, don’t you?” The bravado is anger, and the anger is fear, but right now he concentrates on the rage and he spits blood at the blurry man in front of him.

The man stops, and says, “You’re the guy who’s gonna tell me about David Lieberman.”

Shit. Carson spits again, and it hurts his teeth, but swallowing blood makes him sick and he’s not about to vomit all over himself in front of a robber-turned-sadist-turned-torturer. He has his dignity, and when he kills this guy he’s gonna track down everyone who talked about Lieberman, and he’s gonna kill them, too. “Who?” he says, and the man steps forward and hits him in the teeth where it hurts. A yell, not quite a scream, tears itself from his throat. He starts work on the knots keeping his hands bound. They’re not well-tied. So this guy’s an amateur, even though he doesn’t fight like one.

“The hacker, the man you put down.”

What he saw in the man’s eyes was probably his own brain choking in the middle of a stressful situation. He starts to laugh. 

The man steps up and yanks his head back.

One punch to the gut and he’s choking, breath gone. Two punches and he feels the vibrations kicking up his throat. Three, and he sees stars. For a moment he can’t draw breath. But this guy’s an amateur who doesn’t tie his knots right. How he punches is irrelevant. “I know a little bit about this,” he wheezes. “I spent some time in Guantanamo, and torture, it doesn’t work.”

The man, walking away from him, stops and turns. This is news to him, Carson guesses.

“Any information you’re given is suspect. If you were a professional, you would know that.”

The man just pulls out a gun.

Fear jumps into his throat. Maybe this guy isn’t such an amateur. Maybe he just wants to make Carson hurt. “Look, David Lieberman was a traitor. He was killed resisting arrest.”

The man laughs, a short, rusty bark. “‘S not what he told me.”

Carson continues working the knots, and then that sinks in. Shit. _Shit._

“You were working with Schoonover, weren’t you?”

Saliva floods his mouth. “W-who?”

“And I’m guessing you don’t know anything about heroin from Kandahar, right?” The man tucks the gun into the back of his pants.

“You just answered your own question,” he grits out. He just has to get these knots out, has to get the man closer--

And again, he can see those eyes smiling, and the man draws the gun and calmly _shoots out his fucking kneecap._ The pain is so immediate and intense, Carson pisses himself. He can’t see, and all he hears is a deep whine, and he tastes electricity in his broken mouth. He thinks he may be screaming. He’s not sure.

It all clears, and the man’s kneeling in front of him, gently shushing him, and he’s gotta focus, he’s gotta focus. He feels the first knot give way. Thank God. That’s enough, and he rips his hands free, grabs the gun from the man’s waistband.

Carson stands, weight on his good leg, pain from the bad one making his head spin, and he shouts, “GET ON YOUR FUCKING KNEES.”

The man’s watching him, careful.

“DO IT.”

The man kneels, hands up.

“And put your hands behind your head. Now.” He keeps the gun aimed at the man’s head. It’s hard. He’s swaying so much. But he has to make sure.

He staggers forward and rips off the mask.

At first he can’t fucking believe it. This is Frank fucking Castle, cowed in front of him. He got the upper hand on the fucking Punisher. But then he can. “Holy shit. You don’t know how to die, do you? You’re a fucking cockroach.” He spits blood again. “This is rich.”

Castle can’t look him in the eye as he asks, “You gonna read me my rights?”

For a moment, he has all the power in the world. He caught the fucking Punisher. Too bad nobody’s there to see it. Too bad nobody will ever know. “No, I don’t think I’m gonna do that.” His knee gives a jolt of pain and he staggers back into his seat, breathing hard. “Tonight’s the night you’re gonna die, Frank.” Castle tracks him with his eyes as he says, “Third time’s the charm. The fucking Punisher? You’re pathetic. I almost feel sorry for you. We knew exactly where you’d be, exactly where to go to get you.” Now his mouth won’t stop, and it feels good. “You bored your squad shitless about your little homecoming tradition. Picnic in the park, Frank? You really were your Mama’s little apple pie, weren’t you?” He sees the realization dawning in Castle’s eyes and the satisfaction curls in him. He grins with his broken teeth. 

“What are you saying? You killed my family to get to me?”

“Misdirection. If there were enough bodies, nobody’d look too closely at each.”

“And Lieberman, what about Lieberman? What does he have to do with all this?”

Carson stands, again, sways and brings the muzzle of his gun to Castle’s head. “We thought you were the one that sent him the tape. Now close your eyes, Frank. I’m gonna do you a favor. You’re gonna see your family real soon.”

He pulls the trigger. Nothing happens.

He has just a breath of time for fear before Castle is grinning like the maniac he is and slamming straight into him.

*

Frank wonders, for one delicious moment, whether he should let Wolfe get to the door before he kills him.

He doesn’t.

*

Madani’s phone is buzzing on her nightstand. She picks it up, answers the call, and goes cold.

She leaves Russo in bed with a note and rushes into her clothes.

Shit.

*

Curtis is eating his customary insomnia Cheerios at around four when he gets the sense that something is Very Wrong.

Goddammit, Frank.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Donny hasn’t been able to go back to work in the past couple of days. He knows he needs to, is terrified of getting fired and losing their only income, but. But. He just can’t. It scares him, it scares him and makes him sick and the thought of going back has him heaving into the toilet at three in the morning, snot and tears running past his lips and soaking his shirt. So he figures Grandma knows; she hasn’t said a word even though they can barely pay rent and he _needs_ to be at the site.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A shorter, calmer update. Don't expect the next one for a couple more weeks; I have finals and a spring break filled with doctor's appointments. Hope you guys enjoy! Thank you for all your wonderful comments; they inspire me to keep writing!! (They're always, always appreciated.)

Donny wonders if he should talk to his grandma about this whole not sleeping thing. Donny thinks she already knows. She’s been making him tea before bed. He kinda wishes she’d give him something stronger, but the last time he was drunk he agreed to ruin his life, so he kinda figures it’s better to not ask.

But Grandma doesn’t push it. It’s part of what he loves about her; she doesn’t push the shit you don’t want to talk about. She just waits until it bubbles over out of you, and then she’s there to hug you and tuck you in and make sure you feel safe with yourself before you go to sleep. It doesn’t make everything better, but it sure fucking helps.

He can hear an old rerun of Phil Donahue muffled through the wall. He smiles. Grandma’s always up early, and she’s had those tapes for so many years that some of them are falling apart. He keeps telling her they can stream them on his busted-up laptop. Grandma always just looks at him like he’s a little kid and pops in the tape anyway.

Donny hasn’t been able to go back to work in the past couple of days. He knows he needs to, is terrified of getting fired and losing their only income, but. But. He just can’t. It scares him, it scares him and makes him sick and the thought of going back has him heaving into the toilet at three in the morning, snot and tears running past his lips and soaking his shirt. So he figures Grandma knows; she hasn’t said a word even though they can barely pay rent and he _needs_ to be at the site. Food stamps don’t cover medicine and housing, and the hoops he has to jump through for those are ridiculous enough.

He opens his phone at six in the morning, eyes dry and burning after another sleepless night. The first thing he sees is a news notification: **Homeland Security Agent Found Dead in Home.** Donny doesn’t wanna follow the link, but he does. There’s a content warning at the top.

Some guy named Carson Wolfe got murdered last night. No discernible motive, other than that he worked for Homeland. The article speculated it was terrorists.

Donny rubs his nose and closes out of the app. He can’t afford to get worked up about this right now. He wanders out of his room and into the kitchenette, where his grandma is getting out two bowls for hot cereal.

“Morning Grandma,” he mumbles. He can’t get his lips to move the way he wants them to.

Her wrinkly face crumples into a smile, happy eyes magnified by her enormous glasses. “Good morning, cariño. How was your night?”

He shrugged. “Fine.”

_“Please get me the oatmeal,”_ she said, switching to Spanish, and he obliges. His hands feel so heavy and the canister is so light. He worries how they’re gonna make it this week. Grandma speaks again. _“There’s still time to get to the site if you hurry.”_

The sound of a man’s head crushing under a sledgehammer churns his gut. 

Donny’s gotta do this at some point, though. “I’ll go get dressed,” he says, and kisses her cheek before fleeing into his bedroom to change clothes. Hopefully the foreman’ll still have him.

*

Curtis is hunched over a cup of coffee when his phone pings him about Carson Wolfe. He dials Frank’s number (never keeps it saved, always deletes the call history--he’s not a damn idiot) and gets a machine in response. “The owner of this phone has not yet set up a voicemail. Goodbye.” He wants to strangle the guy--though he figures one of them has to suppress his murderous impulses. Obviously Frank’s a lost cause at this point.

He hops his way back to bed and starts to put on his leg. He’ll try calling one more time.

Except, as he’s rolling up the silicone sleeve, his phone buzzes in his pocket. He swipes and answers.

“Hello?”

“Hey.”

It’s Frank. He sounds wrecked. Curtis frowns. “You okay, man?”

“Yeah, ‘m fine.” There’s a long pause. Curtis can hear road noise in the background of the call. Frank growls. “How do you tell if you’ve got a concussion?”

That’s...great. Just wonderful. “Frank--”

“Just tell me so I can hang up. Can’t deal with your mothering.”

Curt is _not mothering him._ “Uh, one second.” He wants to make sure he didn’t miss anything, so he makes his way to his laptop and searches the symptoms. “Google exists, Frank. You know that.” He quirks his mouth to one side so the smirk will really come through. “You must really wanna hear my voice. I gotta say, I’m touched.” He is, but Frank doesn’t deal well with sincere emotions. Humor works on everybody.

A rough growl. “Curt.”

“Sorry, sorry. Why d’you think you have a concussion?”

“Some asshole threw a lamp at my head.”

“And it hit?”

Frank grunts.

“You have a hard head. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

“Curtis.” Frank sounds vaguely annoyed, but Curtis thought that was pretty accurate.

He swallows his grin and asks, “Headache?”

“Yeah.”

“You feel like the light’s hurting your eyes?”

“Little bit.”

Curt considers for a second. “Feel like you’re gonna be sick?”

“Maybe.”

“You know who the President is, right?”

“Curtis Hoyle, do not make me say it.”

Curtis laughs. “You might have a mild concussion but it’s probably safe to sleep on. Get some rest, huh? Sounds like you had a long night.”

Something softens in the pause between them. Frank speaks again. “Yeah, Curt. Thanks.” Then he hangs up.

Curtis leaves the phone against his ear for a long time. He wishes Frank would just crash here.

It’s too late to go back to sleep, so he dresses and gets ready to herd some veterans.

*

It’s not like Frank can afford any safehouses across the city--real estate prices in New York has been known to drive people to desperate measures to pay rent (see: Donny, poor kid)--and they’d be shitholes anyway, not worth the money. His previous apartment was clean and dry and had good heating; it was a shoebox but it was at least serviceable. Now though, after Donny...

Frank’s been living in his van. It’s not like he hasn’t done it before, and it’s certainly not what he considers roughing it. He just needs a crate to stack his books and room for a sleeping bag, and then he’s got a roof over his head and the ability to move out quick if he needs to. To be honest, he likes it. He’d like it more if he’d thought to insulate the siding and the windows before this cold snap rolled in. It’s how he ends up in a hardware store at nine in the morning trying real hard to look like he didn’t just wash up in a Denny’s bathroom.

He rubs his sore eyes. It’s a huge warehouse and he’s not sure how they crammed it into a city as crowded as this. He touches his tongue to his throbbing upper lip and feels a scab, tastes copper. Frank sips his coffee and tries to locate something that’ll work for insulation. He’s got a small toolbox in his van--drill and all, even though those make him nervous ever since the Irish jammed one into his foot--but he’ll still need the right kind of bolt for the blackout curtains he plans to hang.

God, his head aches. It’s why he doesn’t notice Sarah Lieberman behind him until she’s tapping him on the shoulder and smiling real wide. “Pete!”

He turns and that smile flickers when she sees his face. Must be worse than he thinks. “Hey Sarah.”

“What happened to you? This isn’t from when I hit you, is it?”

Frank forces a laugh. “Nah,” he says, but doesn’t offer more of an explanation. “What’re you uh, what’re you doing here?”

She shrugs. “Oh, y’know. Things.”

“Did something break?”

“Hah, no. Not yet. Just uh, hanging some new curtains in Leo’s room.” Sarah frowns a little bit, studying him closer. “You doing okay, Pete?”

He nods, quick. His palms are starting to sweat. “I have, uh,” he gestures to his cart, “I have to get this back to uh--”

“Yeah, I should probably let you get back to that. Sorry for--”

“No, no problem. Nice to see you, Sarah.”

She glances at the floor for just barely a moment before looking back up at him. “Nice to see you too, Pete.”

Frank backs away with his cart and waits until she absorbs herself in the curtain rods before he turns around.

*

Cleaning his boots has become relaxing. He went for lightweight over steel-toe, and they’re mostly fabric so there’s not much polishing he has to do. Zippers over laces to eliminate the extra expense. Time had nothing to do with that decision; he can still lace up a pair of boots and be out the door in under 30 seconds.

He has his windows down for ventilation and he’s spraying the boots with a little extra waterproofing; it never hurts to be cautious. What does hurt, though, is wet socks, and not because he’s a baby: wet socks have rubbed away countless patches of skin on his feet and have left him hurting for weeks on end. He always powers through, of course, but it’s nice to not have to worry.

Frank yawns. There’s still more left to do, and then maybe he can catch a few hours in the back. He’s put up almost all the insulation and the curtain rods are hung--he just needs the curtains themselves.

He can hear kids playing outside.

He bites the inside of his cheek.

Dammit, Frank’s lonely. Having the dog for that short week last year really helped, but after the incident with the Irish he had to drop her off at the shelter. Everything he touches is in danger from the second his fingers meet skin.

He just wants something to hold.

Frank removes the blood from the soles of his boots with a stiff wire brush and resolutely doesn’t think about Karen. Doesn’t think about holding her.

Doesn’t think about being held.

*

_“I want you to tell me why you think you deserve to carry on with this. Hold that there. Tell me.”_

_He cuts into the sandbag. Frank’s guts spill from it, just meat hitting the grass wetly._

_Frank doesn’t know what he says._

_“You’re not lying to me?”_

_“No, Sergeant.”_

_“You’re not lying to me?”_

_“No, Sergeant.”_

_“You sure you’re not lying to me?”_

_“I’m sure, Sergeant.”_

_The space between them is almost intimate. He continues sawing at the bag Frank holds. “You’re sure about what you’re saying?”_

_“Yes, Sergeant.”_

_He drops his arm to his side. “Go ahead, shake it out.”_

_Frank shakes out the bag. The gore soaks into his shoes._

_He smiles. “It’s okay.”_

Frank wakes up shaking, his eyes painfully dry. 

*

Donny eats his lunch where Pete used to. It’s quiet, up on the roof there.

The site’s still a crime scene so far, but that doesn’t stop everyone from getting work done on the other side of the yard. God though. The cops are set to question him soon, but for now he has leftover takeout and a liter of water. He sighs through his nose. Donny knows he’s already suspicious enough, disappearing for a couple of days after Pete killed Paulie and the guys, but he tries to stay calm. It’s not working, but all he can do is try.

*

Frank knows his body’s gonna give out on him one day, that at some point he’s not gonna be able to keep stitching himself back together. He runs his fingers almost gently over a scar, the one people notice when his collar’s too low. He lets the water run down.

It should worry him that he’s not fazed by the scars. The coin-shaped starburst on his chest from somebody’s bullet, one that didn’t quite take. The hole in his fucking skull. It should worry him because everyone who sees them gets scared, but he’s lived with them so long now that they’re just _there._

Sure, Frank didn’t choose this. But he’s not complaining, not too much. He doesn’t love the comedown from the adrenaline after a fight, would rather sleep soundly at night--or at least worry about normal shit like bills and a job and whether that mole on his ass is suspicious enough to warrant braving the dermatologist. Hell, he should be worried right now: he doesn’t own a pair of flip flops and he’s _still_ using a public shower, but honestly? He’s too tired to give a shit.

The point is, Frank should worry about a lot of things, but he’s not going to. He joined up for a lot of reasons, loved the family his unit gave him, and is grateful for the skills they taught him. He scrubs his hands over his face, feels stubble and deep worry lines from grief and anger and too many buried loves. Frank didn’t choose this part, but it’s his now and he has to learn how to deal with the sucking hole in his chest.

The door opens and he hears the gentle snick of sandals against tile. The stall next to him starts, so he tries to finish soaping up as quickly as possible. As Frank gets his calves, his fingers run over soft, raised keloids, run over scabs, sting in a new cut he didn’t even realize he had. He rinses, then gets his shoulders for the second or third time. Thank fuck his hair’s shorter now; it was a pain to wash when it was long. 

Frank rubs down his thighs like he’s an old working animal, trying to massage some life into them. He rinses again and goes for the small of his back, where it’s always sore.

He turns off the water abruptly and towels off. He dresses, blousing his jeans like a dumbass before he’s even realized what he’s doing. Frank undoes the folds and slips on his socks, then his boots, and he’s ready to go.

Where, he’s not sure.

He needs some more names. He needs to know who’s connected to Rawlins.

But first, he needs an arsenal, and a base to bring them to.

Frank calls Lieberman.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short little chapter before I have to write some action. I'm not certain I got the chronology with Lewis quite right, but y'all we're just gonna roll with it.

The first thing they have to do, says Castle, is to arm themselves. And then he just stares at David, like he’s supposed to get it right away, and he frowns when David doesn’t like he’s “not mad, just disappointed.” David’s been a dad for years; he knows that damn look. Finally, he asks. “Okay, what do you want me to do?”

Castle snorts incredulously. “You have no idea what you’re doing, do you?”

Fuck this posturing shit. “I mean, I didn’t get any more psychic while you were gone. You gotta communicate, Frank.” Yeah, David’s scared of the guy, but he’s not about to let him make him feel like an idiot. 

“Lieberman” Castle says slowly, not cowed at all, “if we buy that many guns legal, somebody’s gonna notice.”

David doesn’t think that’s ever been a problem in the good ol’ US of A, but he can appreciate the paranoia and their combined shit luck. If somebody were ever going to notice a white American man building an arsenal, it would be now. “So you’re saying we find somebody with illegal firearms? Isn’t that your job?”

“Look, you wanna work with me I gotta find something for you to do, yeah?”

“So what, I just call up Turk Barrett and ask nicely?”

“I’m saying there’s probably a drop happening somewhere that we can intercept.”

Was Castle _really_ this bad at communicating? Had he tried therapy, after his family’d been murdered, and the therapist’d just thrown him out, and that’s why he went on that rampage last year? David honestly wouldn’t be surprised at this point. He shrugged. “Okay.” First place to check, with his skills, is the NYPD. If they had info about a weapons drop, or a cache, or some other buzzword, then maybe Castle would go check it out and _get the hell off his back._

But of course, the guy has to stay and make sure he’s doing his job right.

Castle’s looming over David’s shoulder as he works, scrolls through NYPD records. A hand grips his shoulder. “Stop.”

“What?” David’s confused.

“Go back up. To the arrests.”

The grip on David’s shoulder tightens, and Castle touches the monitor. He leaves a fingerprint, and David twitches a little. “That kid. What’d he get arrested for?”

David frowns and glances up at him. “Donny Chavez?”

Castle nods tightly.

David clicks and waits for the page to load. “Uhh, looks like...suspicion of murder.” That kid? He looked so--so sweet, for lack of a better word. “Why?”

Castle releases his grip on his shoulder. “Shit.”

“Frank, what’s going on?”

“That dumbass kid, gonna strangle him--”

“Frank!”

Castle leans down and gets in David’s face. From this close, he just looks tired. “Worked with him for a grand total of three days before he got himself thrown in a mixer.”

David processes this. “So you...killed the guys who did it.”

Castle grunts. It’s probably affirmative.

“And now he’s getting blamed for it?”

“Looks like.” The other man takes two slow, deep breaths. “So we’re gonna break him out.”

David just stares. “I’m sorry?”

“We’re gonna break him out. The evidence points to him, and he’s got family he needs to take care of.”

“So do I, Frank. What about me? What about Sarah and my kids?”

Castle looks angry, but behind that he just looks sad. “I can’t leave him to rot for something I did.”

Right. The Marines leave no one behind. David gnaws on a fingernail. “You can’t just break him out. He’ll be a fugitive.”

“Then what the hell are we supposed to do?”

Oh no, now he’s used _we._

“Huh, Lieberman? The hell are we supposed to do?”

David buries his face in his hands, just for a moment. “I don’t know, Frank. Maybe if you gave me a second to think--”

“Because if we don’t bust him out, he’s got no chance. His blood’s all over the damn place and it’s my fucking fault.” Castle backs up and starts pacing.

“He better get a good lawyer.” David doesn’t know what the hell he’s supposed to do, at least for the first thirty seconds after he says this. But Castle looks at him expectantly, and then David realizes: Karen Page and her dumbass law firm. With one last, exhausted look at the other man, he dials her number.

He doesn’t have to have the Punisher hanging over his shoulder like a toddler while he makes the call, though, so David gets up while the phone’s ringing and gets some stuff from the fridge: onions, tomato, swiss cheese, lunchmeat. He grabs the rye bread out of the box on top of the fridge and starts chopping vegetables.

“Hello?” says Karen from the other end.

David sighs. “Hi, Ms. Page.”

A pause. “Karen. It’s Karen. What do you need?”

Phone cradled between his ear and his shoulder, he rinses the tomato and pats it dry with a paper towel. “Our uh, mutual friend made a friend while he was out of town. Said friend needs a lawyer, apparently.”

“Mm.” The sound of raised eyebrows carries across the line.

“The kid’s apparently getting blamed for our guy’s mess, is the thing.”

“Oh.”

“He’s...really torn-up about it.” David slices the tomato and cleans out the seeds.

Karen doesn’t reply.

“We figured since you used to do work for Nelson and Murdock, you could get one of them to help out?”

A long, long pause. When Karen finally speaks, her voice is strained and sad. “It’ll have to be Nelson.”

David doesn’t really care. He sets the onions and tomato carefully on the bread and cheese and meat, then gets out a pan. “Sure.”

“I’m not making any promises.”

“That’s fine.” She better get Nelson on this, quickly, or Castle’s gonna wear a hole in the floor. David starts melting butter. 

“Okay.” Karen hangs up before he can say anything else.

David turns to Castle, who’s still pacing. Castle looks up. His trigger finger twitches. David sighs through his nose to ward off the familiar spike of anxiety. “She’s gonna try.”

He sets the sandwich in the pan and listens to it sizzle.

Castle’s phone starts to ring.

 

*

“I’m not helping you with these guns until you get my wife what she needs, Frank.”

*

 

“Why don’t I fix it for you,” Pete says, eyes kind.

Sarah’s beginning to find his wide stance and big arms comforting. It’s so different from David that she can’t help but think of him, the way his lankiness showed even in the bones of his fingers. His hands were cool and soft and thin, but she can see as Pete clasps his arms in front of him and waits for her response that his are callused and stocky. It makes it hurt less. Makes it hurt more, but different. She smiles. “Sure.”

*

The second Curtis spots Lewis in that damn foxhole, he knows there’s trouble even he might not be prepared for.

Lewis looks up before Curtis can announce himself. “My dad send you?”

“You haven’t been to group,” he says in lieu of a straight answer. The last thing Curtis wants is to alienate the kid from his family. “We miss you.”

“Group didn’t help. I can sleep out here.”

God damn, does he know that feeling. One hand on his pistol, deep pit concealing his position--it’s the best place he could be. Better than sleeping in bunks, separate from the people he was assigned to stitch together. 

Still, he’s silent. This isn’t healthy, and Lewis is his responsibility. He’s gotta do something to get the kid back inside. Winter’s not easy to spend out here.

They sit in the quiet for a while, just looking at each other. Curtis doesn’t know what to do.

Then:

Realization hits Curtis hard in the throat and he chokes on it. All the stories he planned to tell Lewis fly from his head, and something like blood in his words flows from his mouth instead. “I met one of my best friends overseas. The war didn’t touch him the same way it touched the rest of us--he was a damn miracle out in the field.” He swallows. Goosebumps raise on his skin in places the cold wind doesn’t hit. “A good soldier, a damn good CO. He was smart, and brave, and I trusted his gut more than I trusted mine, because when he led people in, _they got out._ ”

Lewis looks at him from inside the foxhole.

“As a medic, you see a lot of fuck-ups. Command gets sloppy, people die.” He holds back a grimace and breathes away the gore pulsing in the corners of his brain. “Not saying this guy never lost people, never missed a thing, but. He lead from the front and he made sure his people were safe. Stitched him up more times than I can count. He hated my tent but he’d stay there so nobody of his would wake up alone.” Curtis rubs his hands down his thighs, grounds himself with the sensation of washed jeans and fabric softener. “But when we got home...we were all fucked in the head. Happens to everybody: me, him,” Curtis glances pointedly down at Lewis, dug six feet down into his backyard, “you. It’s not your character, and it certainly wasn’t his. But this guy I knew, he came back to his wife and his kids and he didn’t fit. None of us come back and we fit.”

Even from here, he can tell Lewis’ eyes are teary.

“I did a couple tours and I came back and I stayed. I got lucky: I can’t go back. He kept going, and each time he went he came back with more and more of himself missing.” Frank won’t forgive him for what he’s about to say next, but Curtis has to say it. “And he told me, he told me he was afraid because his wife and his babies weren’t enough to keep him from leaving, and every time he left they’d look at him less and less like he hung the moon and more like he was letting it rot from the inside out. And he kept running until there wasn’t enough left of him to fit anywhere.”

“...What happened to him?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did he just disappear?”

Curtis clenches his fists and lets the grief swell over him. Then he continues. “I’m saying: don’t isolate yourself from the people who love you, Lewis.”

The kid visibly rankles. “Because I’m not gonna hurt them? It’s better out here, it’s clearer. And then they’re not in danger.”

“No, kid. They might lose _you,_ and they’ll never forgive themselves for it.”

Lewis looks away.

“Y’know, out here it rains. You’re gonna get drowned in the mud if you don’t slope the ground. My dad, he was in ‘Nam, and he learned a lot about digging a hole where it rains.” Curtis smiles softly and waits for the kid to turn back to him and see it. “Dig a trench opposite your tarp. You’ll get some good sleep that way.”

*

Curtis remembers sleeping piled in a foxhole with Frank and Billy Russo and a few other guys he still sees around every few months. He remembers an arm around Frank’s shoulders, the man’s head pillowed on his chest. He remembers the sweaty grip of his pistol and Russo passed out facedown on his ankles.

He lets himself cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please yell at me. I want to hear all the yelling. :)


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I was talking to my mother and fretting about this chapter and she stops me and goes, "make something bad happen," to which I reply "I'm doing that tho," and she parried with "make something bad happen, and then make it worse." So really you guys have my mother to blame for all of this. I am not responsible!!
> 
> (I also want to add that, for reasons that will become apparent in about a paragraph or so, that there's nothing *actually wrong* with a Ruger, since they fixed the issues with the aim, but I needed Frank to be grouchy because I love grouchy Frank. But Y'know. Covering my ass in case someone gets on me about it. Idk)  
> (Also, a pink gun? Nuh-uh, we're tactically painting this shit)

As it turns out, they do in fact need to call up Turk Barrett, and he’s a dead end. Frank drives away from the dock cursing his conspicuous van and stops at a Mickey D’s on the way back to Lieberman’s base. He buys the first thing he sees on the menu and a flimsy plastic cup of orange juice--and then glares at every pedestrian who crosses in front of him and delays his return to the dumb shady warehouse Lieberman decided wasn’t suspicious. If Frank were a petty man, he’d have bought a bigger meal to eat in front of his “partner.” As it is, spending the extra cash is dumb. This whole thing is idiotic. Why the hell’d he let Karen talk him into this? 

He wonders if she’s contacted anybody about Donny.

Frank doesn’t pull into the warehouse garage; he parks about twelve blocks east of the place and shoves the stupid fucking pink Ruger mini-14--fucking shit sweet sixteen present, he would’ve gotten Lisa something with more practical goddamn application than a neon AR-configured pee-shooter anybody could see anywhere--into a duffle bag with his essentials and _Bless Me, Ultima,_ the book he’s reading currently.

Lisa coulda used a pistol like Wolfe’s. Glock 17, light, reliable, low-recoil, with a trigger reset you could feel up your finger. Ugly as shit and built like a brick, but Lisa had been like her Pops in that they both had a soft spot for ugly, useful things. He wonders: if she were still around, would she have realized he was one of them?

He’s so absorbed in the thought that he knocks shoulders with some businessman. The guy almost spills his coffee, and Frank almost drops his bag. The businessman yells at him to watch it, and Frank barely spares him a glance, sipping his juice and hefting his duffle over his shoulder.

That tie the guy’s wearing is a disgustingly corporate shade of blue. If he pulls it up that fleshy pink neck and above his Adam’s apple, Frank can break him without trying hard.

He keeps walking. This is some unglamorous bullshit. This didn’t happen to him when he was still on the news.

Frank makes it to Lieberman’s without a physical incident and slams his bag down next to him.

“What?” he asks.

Frank grits his teeth and unzips the bag. “Your info was wrong.”

Lieberman frowns. “Then the NYPD’s info was wrong.”

“That doesn’t fucking matter!” he says, and pulls the rifle from the bag. “How the hell are we supposed to take on Agent Orange with a pink Ruger and no fuckin ammo?”

Lieberman grimaces. “I don’t know--”

“You don’t know, huh?”

“No, Frank, I don’t. Just give me an hour and I’ll see what went wrong, okay?”

Frank pulls his burger out of its red and white paper bag and tosses the wrapper on the floor.

“I just mopped that floor like, last week, Frank. Can you not do this?”

Frank takes one of Lieberman’s pens and scrapes the ketchup from the bun onto the back of an old-looking receipt.

“Okay, now you’re just being childish.”

He stares at the other man and dips a fry in the castoff condiment. He eats quickly while Lieberman tries--and fails--to get work done.

Maybe Frank’s a little more petty than he’d like to admit.

Maybe by doing this, he’s hoping Lieberman will see him as more of a person and less of a threat.

Hah. He’s not optimistic.

*

Madani wants to get these assholes on US soil. They’re a distraction from a much bigger enemy and she has to mow them down before she can move on. She told Stein that, before Rafi came in and told her she’d lost weight, like that was a damn compliment. Then he told her he was taking the Wolfe case--and she couldn’t get the image out of her mind: his neck bent at an awkward angle, head flopping gelatinously as the paramedics picked him up--and she needed to take the Greeks down. She needed to not lose focus. 

Madani had stood and listened to the bullshit he was feeding her. She knows what Rafi was doing: giving her a biscuit so she’ll let go of the bone before she bites the hand that feeds her. Wise decision for him, but this is her partner, her brother, and she’d seen evil in tac gear shoot him through the eye. She won’t rest, not until there’s justice done.

So she lets Rafi walk out the door; hopefully he feels more like he’s accomplished something and less like she’s just humoring him to get him out of there.

She blows harshly through her lips and gets back to work.

*

“Tell me again why my wife has your phone number?”

Frank sighs. “Leverage.”

“Mm. You gonna go see her?”

He shrugs, and out of the corner of his eye Lieberman makes a face. In response to the face, he says, “Somebody has to.”

“Ouch, low blow, Frank.”

Even to him, his laugh sounds rusty.

“She uh, she sounded kinda lonely.”

“She was talking about a leaky pipe,” Frank says.

The other man launches his office chair back from his desk and spins it. “You gonna go see my wife, Frank?”

“Sounds like you want me to.”

Lieberman gives him a long look. It’s uncomfortable, like his eyes see a little too much. “You’re not my first choice--” he laughs a little--“but I don’t, I don’t want Sarah to be lonely, y’know? I’m not hiding here by choice.”

“Why the hell are you giving me sad eyes, Lieberman? Your face ain’t cute enough for that.”

“...”

“Stop it! Okay, okay, I’m going. Jesus fucking Christ, those are gonna fall the fuck out of your head if you open them any wider.” Frank slams out of the warehouse, Lieberman’s smug following him out the door. Ugh. The things he does for these people.

He drives his crusty van back yet again to the nice neighborhood Sarah and the kids live in, feeling distinctly like he shouldn’t be here.

Frank knocks on the door. It’s answered by a sullen-looking boy: Zach, he guesses. He’s never seen the kid before, but if he squints he looks just like Frankie Jr..

“Are you Pete?” probably-Zach says.

He reaches for a smile. “Yeah. Your mom home? She called me about your sink.”

The kid doesn’t answer, just turns around and yells for Sarah. When she gets to the door, she looks tired.

“Hi, Pete. I didn’t know you got my call.”

He shrugs. “I was in town.”

She rolls her eyes, like she doesn’t believe that. Zach ducks under her arm and pounds up the stairs, leaving the two of them on the doorstep.

Frank shoves his hands in his pockets. The cold’s starting to really bite; he should’ve brought a hat.

They stand there in silence for a second as he waits for her to invite him in, but it’s broken by a young voice yelling “OW! God _dammit!_ ”

Sarah breathes out what’s almost a laugh. “I didn’t know you were coming, so Leo, she decided she wanted to try fixing the sink before we called the plumber.”

“Want me to give her a hand?”

It’s almost like she’s just realized she’s been standing in the doorway this whole time, and she looks sheepish as she moves aside. “Come on in.”

Frank follows her lead into the kitchen, where a girl about Lisa’s age is sitting on a towel, trying to affix a bandaid to her thumb. Must be Leo. She looks up, and her face is scrunchy with little girl toughness. Frank likes her immediately. “Hey kid,” he says, trying to make himself a bit smaller for her sake. A little less intimidating.

Sarah bends down to inspect the bandaid. She dabs her sleeve on Leo’s wet thumb and straightens the little strip of plastic. “What happened?”

“Wrench slipped.”

She puts a motherly hand on the girl’s head.

Frank speaks, tries to be a little softer. “So what’s the problem?”

“Garbage disposal’s acting up,” she says. “It’s not the pipe; I googled it.”

Smart kid. Frank crouches down. “Mind if I take a look?”

She scoots back so he can see.

He peers in. “Yeah, that’s a two-man job.” He looks at her, and her eyes sparkle. “Want some help?”

*

“You don’t need to call a guy anymore,” he says, because he’s gonna teach Lieberman how to fix his own damn sinks. Then he looks at Leo, and she smiles up at him, and it hurts so bad that he can’t help but grin back. “You got Leo.”

Her smile widens, so he does the next logical thing.

Frank says, “Nice job, kid,” and gently--gently, so gently, she’s so breakable and he breaks everything with a beating heart--pats her shoulder.

*

“Your sniper spacing’s off,” Madani says to Stein, and he visibly wilts. She might even sorta regret saying that, but this is the briefing, and if his spacing’s off, it’s off. She’s not pointing it out to be cruel.

Later, he asks her if he got anything right, and she frowns. “I didn’t mean it like that. You did a good job. Everybody misses things.”

He blinks.

She flashes him a sharp grin, and says, “It’s why I’m the SAC.”

Stein rolls his eyes, but she also gets a smile out of him. It feels like victory.

*

Frank tries to remember the feel of an F chord and bites his lip when it comes out wrong.

“Hey Santana, I found your guns,” calls Lieberman.

*

The phone goes to voicemail twice before Karen hears David pick up. “I’m kinda busy right now,” he says, and it sounds like he’s talking through his teeth.

She rests a hand on her countertop. “I just wanted to tell you--are you driving?” At this hour?

“Mmhm.” 

Karen worries her lower lip with her teeth. “You’re doing something for Frank?”

David hums again in response. A beat, and something clatters in the background. “Aw, shit. I dropped--fuck. Hold on.”

In the silence, she can hear sirens faintly, probably far away. “I can call back--”

A sound like she’s been put somewhere, and more swearing.

It’s worry that keeps Karen on the line. A triumphant yell, and a sound like David’s pressing the accelerator. She can still hear him talking--had he dropped a radio or some kind of comm? 

“Sorry Frank, dropped the radio. What’s your 20?”

She can’t hear the man’s response.

“What? Yeah, yeah I heard you, just...well shit.”

Another long pause, in which she holds her breath. 

“Yeah, yeah I’ll let you concentrate. You need me?”

Here, she can barely make out a tinny yell. 

“Yeah, uh. See you at base.”

It seems like Karen’s been forgotten on the line. She stays put.

A sound like David’s forcing whatever he’s driving to go faster. He swears, loud, and she hears him thumping the steering wheel. 

Karen sinks to the floor of her little kitchen. It’s cool and grounding.

She can hear engines now.

“No, no no no. Oh fuck! Fuck!”

Despite herself, she gasps.

A sound like shearing metal-on-metal. Like a car crash.  
“Goddammit!”

*

David can hear from the phone a tinny “David?? David, what’s going on?” He ignores it and stops the truck to stare openmouthed at the smoking wreck in front of him. That delay when he dropped the comm...if he’d been here sooner.

The two cars have crumpled together. It looks like they’d hit each other head-on.

The blue Mustang is flipped, and the car Castle is in--is still in, oh G-d, oh _God_ \--is crushed and compacted in the front like it’s a fucking tin can. There’s glass everywhere, flickering and buzzing under the orange sodium lights. He can feel his breathing go out of control, and he’s frozen, he’s hyperventilating because nobody’s getting out of those cars. David chokes. He can feel tears gathering at the corners of this eyes; his knuckles are white on the steering wheel. He opens the cab door and hops down. His knees buckle.

David spares a glance at the Mustang and presses his lips together. He feels sick.

He goes to Castle.

There are flames starting to catch in the clicking ruin of what used to be the engine. The driver’s side door hangs ajar. He pulls it farther open and it screeches.

Castle’s been thrown back, bleeding head cradled by the bucket seat. There’s a stench of spreading oil and blood. David sees a sharp, flat bone poking through the man’s shirt and he swallows back acid. Fuck. Oh fuck.

He needs to call an ambulance. He left his phone in the truck.

“Frank?” No answer. He reaches out with a shaking hand, feels lightheaded at the slickness of blood on the man’s face. “Frank?”

He gives a start and opens his eyes. They’re glazed and slowly, the pupils are going uneven. Fuck. He’s bleeding from his ears. His nose is a red mess. Shit.

“Frank!” David almost yells, but he keeps his voice down. 

“Curtis,” the man slurs.

“Who?”

“Call...” but his eyes are falling shut.

“Who is Curtis? Frank, you gotta--”

The door on the blue Mustang pops open.

Shit.

*

When Foggy gets the Skype notification that Karen’s calling him, he frowns. They’ve already talked today, haven’t they? Didn’t they get everything hashed out? And it’s late, too, later than he remembers Karen ever going to bed. He’s only still here because he has a pile of statements to sort through. Still, he picks up, and when the call opens, cold washes over him. Karen’s obviously trying very hard to keep it together, but she’s shaking minutely and there are high spots of color on her cheeks. She’s holding her phone like it’s the hand of someone she loves.

What the hell? “Karen, what--”

“You know the person Matt called when he needed help, don’t you?” Her voice is watery and cracked. “The woman who fixed him up?”

Claire Temple? He feels his lips part. “Why--”

“I just need her phone number. Please.”

“What’s going on?”

He can hear swearing from the phone in her hand. She looks at it, then holds it against her ear. “David?”

Who the hell is David? Foggy whiteknuckles his armrests.

“Is he okay?” A long pause. Karen brings one slender hand to her mouth. “Oh, god. I--I’m getting the number of someone who can help, but--” She looks at the screen, round eyes imploring and about to spill over with tears. “Foggy, please.”

He rubs his forehead. First she wants him to do a shady lawyering job pro-bono, and now she’s asking for Claire? What the hell is she mixed up in?

Foggy can’t say no, though, so he writes down the number and shows her over the screen.

*

Madani wasn’t letting this fucker go. This was supposed to be fucking simple.

It took her barely a second to decide to get in her car and shove it into gear so she could chase whoever this bastard was. The truck was gone but she’d bet anything the accomplice was in that red Mustang--too flashy to be anything but stolen--so she leaned over the steering wheel and let the purrs and roars of her vehicle settle into her entrails, into her bones.

In front of her she could see inside the car: the barest outline of short hair, broad shoulders.

Whoever this was, he was a damn good driver. She’d trained with some good people to learn how to chase a car; this guy must’ve done the same. Maybe he wasn’t the accomplice. Even better.

He screeched around a corner, coming up fast.

Madani slowed and hit the clutch. She shifted the stick straight up, into third, took a deep breath, and drifted hard into the turn. She let it out and doubled down on the gas.

They were side by side. She could see the outline of his face. She bared her teeth and swerved in front of him.

She thought that’d catch him, but she saw light catch his face instead and he looked so damn familiar--and he rotated into a quick turn and sped in the other direction. 

Madani went after him, but he’d gotten such a head start she wasn’t sure where he was anymore.

But she knew where he’d be.

*

David watches in horror as a woman drags herself from the wreckage of her car. And not just any woman, no: Dinah fucking Madani. _His_ Dinah, the one who ruined his life. He’s shaking and swearing under his breath and this fucking night can’t get any fucking worse when he remembers again that his phone is still in the truck.

Dinah Madani crawls along the ground, drags herself along with not a glance to him or to Frank, and when she’s gotten a distance away she curls up on her side and groans.

David wants to help her, he really does, but he’s got about 200 pounds of mass murdering dead weight to get in the truck. He wipes sweat from his eyes. He looks at Frank, barely breathing in the driver’s seat. He looks at Madani again.

“Dammit, Castle,” he says through his teeth, and he takes the chance moving the guy. His head lolls to the side, but it’s not at any kind of horrifying angle, so David takes that as a good sign and tries to lift him out of the seat. He grips Castle’s shoulders, grits his teeth, and tries to pull him up. His arms burn but he can’t do it. Dammit. Dammit dammit dammit. A little blood drips from Castle’s ear and David wants to cry. He braces his knee against the quickly heating car frame and tries again to get Castle out of the crumpled mess. The man budges a little, and then he slides off the seat and bowls David over.

“God _dammit! _” he yells. A quick look at Madani sees she hasn’t noticed them--yet.__

__Castle starts, bleary. “Wha’?”_ _

__“Frank, you gotta stand up. I need you to stand up and lean on me, okay?”_ _

__The man rolls off David. He takes a deep breath and wonders how they’re gonna do this._ _

__David tries to help him to his feet. “C’mon, help me out here.”_ _

__“Gonna puke,” Castle mumbles, sitting up._ _

__“Puke in the truck, we gotta go.” Looking at the other man’s eyes make chills race up David’s spine. One pupil is a pinprick and the other is so dark there’s not a whisper of color in that eye._ _

He hears someone--Madani--chamber a round, and he goes cold.

__They are well and truly _fucked.__ _


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Curtis throws open the door to Karen Page’s apartment. Three shocked sets of eyes stare at him—he counts one David Lieberman, one Karen Page, and one beautiful woman he doesn’t know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: After eight years of faithful service, my ding darn computer finally died. Thanks for your patience, everyone, especially after that cliffhanger.  
> Disclaimer for what you’re gonna read: for as much time as I’ve spent in the hospital, my knowledge of medical procedures is…not great. And even though I’ve done research (so, so much research, like holy shit) I like, still don’t know the difference between systolic and diastolic blood pressure. Forgive me my errors, and if you know the correct version of whatever I fucked up, please please please let me know!!!!!  
> Also…the story’s been getting away from me a little bit. It’s still Kastle, but we might have an addition to the ship. Cookie for you if you can guess who it is. I’ll tag it next chapter. If you only came here for Kastle, I don’t blame you if you bail out now—but if you’d stay, it would mean a lot.  
> Additionally, I have a playlist for the fic that’s being continually updated. If you want to listen to it, it’s here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQmAttCiVgW-laZjHgl0LJ8pC8znRWTOv  
> There’s another song but I can’t find it on youtube, so: https://soundcloud.com/riothorseroyale/i-dont-want-to-let-go  
> Alright, here’s the chapter. <3

Curtis throws open the door to Karen Page’s apartment. Three shocked sets of eyes stare at him—he counts one David Lieberman, one Karen Page, and one beautiful woman he doesn’t know; by the masterful way she’s currently extracting a bullet, he wants to get to know her better. Frank’s unconscious on a blanket on the floor—no surprise—but there’s dried blood on his ears that makes Curtis think “closed skull fracture?” and “shit” in quick succession. His hands tighten on the fabric handle of his medical bag.

It’s Page who speaks first. “Who the fuck are you??”

He inclines his head. “Curtis Hoyle, Navy SARC. Used to work with Frank.” He keeps himself admirably calm; he doesn’t choke on any of his words with Frank’s pathetically limp form in front of him.

The beautiful woman glares up at him, and she’s beautiful and suspicious and stunning. “Yeah, okay. But how’d you know to come here?”

Curtis considers making a joke about how his “Frank is in trouble” alarm was going haywire, but then he realizes it’s not really worth it and says, “Frank said if I didn’t call by,” he checks his watch, “about minus fifteen minutes, that I should turn on the little GPS unit he gave me and find him.”

Lieberman stares at him. They all stare, but especially Lieberman. “What?” the man says, looking absolutely dumbfounded. “I didn’t see any tracker on him.”

Curtis ignores that, because how the hell is he supposed to know where Frank put that thing? And he zeroes in on the aforementioned idiot he’s very much afraid for—and the woman. “You a doctor?”

“Nurse,” she says, not flattered. He decides she would make a very good friend, and maybe even a better ally. “You want the rundown?”

He puts down his bag. “I always want the rundown.”

*

It went down a little like this:

Madani had her gun out, a pretty little number that she trained on Castle first, and Lieberman second. She really looked at him and her eyes widened. The gun dropped into her lap. Her blue Mustang—what was left of it, really--groaned beside her, and she had to look away from the two men to assess it quickly. 

Lieberman couldn’t think about what she was going to do—he had a Punisher to dump in a truck and to—somehow—get some kind of medical attention. At this point he’d risk a hospital. Castle was slumping against him; something wet was pooling on Lieberman’s shoulder and for once in his life he hoped it was drool, or sweat, or tears, and not blood.

Castle groaned, slipped, staggered to the side, and he took Lieberman with him. He readjusted his grip—his hands were sweaty—and he used all his strength and burning overworked muscles to haul the man up to the truck. Sirens wailed in the distance. Castle retched while they were detangling from each other, and he didn’t have a chance to step aside. 

Lieberman grit his teeth and shoved the other man up into the seat, ignoring the stench of vomit and blood—G-d, so much blood.

And that was when Madani, terrifying woman that she was, apparently got her shit together and shot Castle through the shoulder.  
Lieberman took off into the night.

Page was still screaming into the phone Lieberman had left on the dash, and when his ears worked again he listened to her.

*

Curtis lets himself be scared, but only for a second. “Where’d you park the truck?”

“A few blocks west,” Lieberman says. “Not a parking garage, not near any cameras. We should be okay.”

He doesn’t like this, but he crouches down to look more closely at the setup they’ve got Frank in. “So his head injury?”

“Bad, probably. I can’t tell without a CT scan.” Claire says. 

“You immobilized him pretty well, so there’s that.” Curtis takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. A clatter from the kitchen makes him jump: Page is making tea. She doesn’t look at him. She doesn’t look at anybody, but especially not him.

The bloody, acid odor wafting from the couch brings Curtis into an old rhythm. Head injury: check oxygenation and blood pressure first. Hypoxemia, hypotension. He pulls out his SPO2 meter and tries very, very hard not to look at Frank’s empty face while he clips it to his finger and waits for the device to measure the man’s oxygenation. 84—no, 83 percent. It’s much better than he expected, but Curtis still pulls out the little O2 can from his bag. He connects the tubing and sticks the mask over Frank’s face, looping the elastic over his bloody ears instead of moving the man’s head.

It’s a physical pain, seeing his friend like this. It always has been. Curtis can’t afford to get lost in it right now, so he forces himself not to notice the new bruising over the old black eye, or the split over the bridge of Frank’s nose. He allows his hands to rest on Frank’s warm skin for just a moment; it’s a reassurance that he’ll pull through. He has to. The man’s a fighter. He got shot in the fucking head and survived. He can make it through this.

Curtis pulls away. Okay, next is to grab his blood pressure cuff and—

Oh. Claire’s already got it for him, reaching at him over Frank’s still body. He takes it with as much of a grateful smile as he can manage and takes Frank’s blood pressure. Low. Not as bad as it could be, but bad. He bites the side of his tongue and rests his hand gently on Frank’s chest to feel it rise and fall steadily. Another reassurance. Not enough.

“I don’t happen to have saline in my bag, do I?” he mutters to her.

Lieberman clears his throat. “I’ve got some in mine.”

Curtis feels his eyebrows rise but he doesn’t have time to be surprised. He opens his mouth to tell Lieberman to go get it, then, but the man’s already headed to the door, where his bag’s in a pile with a few gleaming cases.

Claire touches his shoulder from the other side of Frank’s body. “I’ll hook him up.” There’s a little distaste in her eyes, now that he’s close enough to see it. He’s not surprised.  
He doesn’t know how the hell Page got her here.

*

Karen finds herself wringing a dry dishtowel between her hands while she waits for her kettle to boil. She watches Claire and Curtis work efficiently on Frank. The stench of blood and vomit makes her feel sick.

_She called Claire through a service on her computer._

_“Who is this?”_

_“Hi, um.” Her terror overwhelmed her for a moment and closed her throat._

_“Who. Is this?”_

_“My name’s Karen, I got your number from Foggy, I—”_

_“Is it Matt?”_

_Grief washed through her but her hammering heart cut through it. “No, no, I—”_

_“Who’s hurt, then?”_

_Karen winced. “You’re not gonna like it.”_

_On the other end, she could hear Claire pause. “Who’s hurt?”_

_“You’re the only person I could call. I—I think he got in some kind of accident.” She couldn’t look at the cell phone sitting on her coffee table. It was dead silent but she couldn’t end the call, not yet._

_“Karen, you need to tell me who got hurt.”_

_“Frank Castle.” It’s barely a whisper. She felt sick even having said his name aloud, like she’d betrayed some great secret. And she had._

_“No.”_

_“Wait—”_

_“He shot up my hospital!”_

_“I was there too!” Karen covered her mouth, frustrated tears burning in her throat. “But—”_

_“I can’t help you.”_

_“Claire, I can’t—he’s going to die!”_

_“Good.”_

_And Karen thought that was it, that the other woman was about to hang up the phone, so she just whispered “Help me.”_

_Claire didn’t hang up._

The water finishes boiling, and she gets out chamomile and lavender for everyone.

There’s really nothing she can do.

**Author's Note:**

> Come yell at me on tumblr @lamby-grahamy, or on twitter @mothership94. <3


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